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IMPRESSIONS: "A Very SWING OUT Holiday" at The Joyce Theater
By Cecly Placenti
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Published on December 12, 2024
Steven Pisano
Creative Team: Evita Arace, LaTasha Barnes, Nathan Bugh, Caleb Teicher, Eyal Vilner
Original SWING OUT Choreography: Caleb Teicher in collaboration with the dancers and creative team, except: Big Apple Contest- choreography by Frankie Manning
New Holiday Choreography: Nathan Bugh and Caleb Teicher in collaboration with the dancers
Directed by Caleb Teicher
Music: all arrangement and orchestrations by Eyal Vilner
Music performed by the Eyal Vilner Big Band
Lighting Design: Serena Wong
Dancers: Brandon Barker, LaTasha Barnes, Nathan Bugh, Natasha Shevchenko, AJ Howard, Jennifer Jones, Breonna Jordan, Brian Lawton, Rachel Pitner, Samantha Siegel, Caleb Teicher, Sean Vitale
An assortment of feet whirl around below a slightly raised curtain at The Joyce Theater’s premiere of A Very SWING OUT Holiday. Sequined tennis shoes, red heels, black and white oxfords, and white sneakers step, slide and turn, seemingly with a life of their own, as the Eyal Vilner Big Band featuring vocalist Imani Rouselle and set up on a platform behind the dancers, plays jazzified Christmas songs. Already, this is a party I want to attend! (And I was able to during Act II.) The curtain rises to reveal festivities already in full swing and the owners of those feet Lindy-Hopping alone and in pairs. The show, created by dancers Evita Arce, LaTasha Barnes, Nathan Bugh, Caleb Teicher and bandmaster Eyal Vilner, is more jubilee than standard performance, and its boisterous energy is infectious.
The Joyce Theater, with its brick-walled warmth and intimate seating arrangement, is the perfect place for a show where the performers’ unique personalities play an integral role. Each performer manages to highlight his or her unique style while celebrating the individuality of others. In fact, the whole point to A Very SWING OUT Holiday seems to be celebration. Celebration of the joy that can be found in music, in movement, and in experiencing those things together.
To that end, the music and dance in this production have equal value and one seems hardly able to exist without the other. Improvisation, an elemental component of the jazz dance and music genres of which Lindy Hop is part, abounds as partners switch roles, sometimes leading, sometimes following with no care for traditional gender norms. In Act I, “The Show,” dancers perform solos or groove in the background while others take the spotlight. Partnerships seamlessly form and dissolve and sometimes performers gather to watch one another, clapping and calling out their support. The social vibe is unmistakable. Audience members ‘ooh’ and ‘ahh’ freely, both responding to and enhancing the communal energy created on stage. My cheeks have never been so sore from smiling during a performance and everywhere I look people are bopping their heads and tapping their feet in time with the band.
As the evening progresses, A Very SWING OUT Holiday showcases all that Lindy Hop can be in the hands of visionary artists. There are dances with canes, dances with hats, and LaTasha Barnes performs a solo in conversation with drummer Evan Hyde in which she punctuates and deconstructs his percussive sounds with her torso, arms, and hips. Barnes, who enchants the audience with her beguiling glances and highly expressive face, easily blends fluidity with sharpness, ending her solo with arm movements reminiscent of Voguing. Samantha Siegel moves like rubber, her body arcing and twisting in impossible contortions as she both complements and contrasts the music. Two dancers, their names chosen from a hat, improvise a flirtatious duet in real time. In Teicher’s intricate and mesmerizing solo, they slide on their toes as if skating, legs flying out and returning beneath just in time to keep from falling, eliciting murmurs of surprise and approval from the audience. Act I’s energy tapers during a soft, cerebral solo by the alluring Nathan Bugh, whose limbs buckle and recover effortlessly as he glides and turns to the rhythm of his own scatting. The voltage rises once again and builds to a finale full of lifts and tosses that sends the audience to its feet in applause.
Lindy Hop is rarely seen on stage — it's more often experienced as a social dance. Teicher and their team, who call themselves the “Braintrust” did more than simply generate a feeling of community in Act I. They also facilitated a dance experience in Act II, which is all about the jam! After a short intermission, audience members of all skill levels and ages, including a nonagenarian from the original Savoy Ballroom where Lindy Hop was born, are invited to twirl and triple-step across the stage as the band launches into its final 30-minute set. Like a true party, people converse in the aisles, hugging and laughing as the dancing continues, now a backdrop to the camaraderie created. A Very SWING OUT Holiday is warm, welcoming, fun, and a perfect way to usher in this festive season.
