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IMPRESSIONS: Ayano Elson + Wendell Gray II a shared evening at Danspace Project
By Catherine Tharin
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Published on December 22, 2024
Ayano Elson's Part Song/Immortal Life. Photo: Rachel Keane
Ayano Elson + Wendell Gray II a shared evening at Danspace Project
in the port’s mouth
Choreography: Wendel Gray II
Performers: Wendell Gray II, Jordan Demetrius Lloyd, Jamal K. White
Sound Design: Wendell Gray II and Zen Jefferson
Dramaturgy: Fana Fraser
Music: Eugene McDaniels, Vladislav Delay, Patti LaBelle, MJ Rodriguez, Ebony Jenkins, Tisha Cambell, Jennifer Hudson, JPEGMAFIA, Earth, Wind and Fire, Todd Rudgren, Diamanda Galas, Rainy Miller & Space Afrika, O$VMV$M, MHYSA, Sylvester, Ozoyo, Aaliyah, Roy Ayeres
Part Song/Part Immortal Life
Choreography: Ayano Elson
Composer and Music Director: Matt Evans
Performers: Amelia Heintzelman, Jade Manns, and evan ray suzuki
Musicians: Leo Chang, Tristan Kasten-Krause, and Zosha Warpeha
Costume Designer: Kate Williams
Lighting Designer: Lutin Tanner
November 21-23, 2024
Last month at Danspace Project, choreographers Ayano Elson + Wendell Gray II shared an evening-length program infused with mystery. Gray offered in the port’s mouth while Elson brought Part Song/Immortal Life. The dancers in each dance do not touch.
As the audience enters St. Mark’s Church two men of nearly identical height, weight and demeanor read and knit while lounging on the gray-carpeted altar stairs. In Wendell Gray II’s intriguing in the port’s mouth, recorded sound builds to a cacophony as the audience settles and the men exit.
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A lone dancer (Gray) walks from an upstage corner with his back to the audience. He jerkily rocks on his feet until his arms react, octopus-like. Spotlit, his squeaky sneakers skid backward. With a slight swagger, he discards his headphones, sheds his jacket, and pushes off his shoes. Suddenly, Gray plants his torso and chin to the floor, his arms close to his sides, his raised pelvis and bent legs with the bottom of his flexed feet aiming skyward. He appears helpless and trussed, as if ready for incarceration. Later, we hear the recorded words, “Let them go” over the insistent percussive score. Yes, we want to shout, let the man go!
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The elegant and twinned Jordan Demetrius Lloyd and Jamal K. White reenter dressed in tailored gray uniforms. Who are they: police, prisoners, guardian angels? Their precise unison turns and scurrying knees to the words “I could help you,” bookend the solitary Gray who dances a singular and personal stream of pungent movement.
In the program Gray says that he is exploring his ancestry, and credits his Dad, Wendell Gray Sr, for the “connection to his lineage which inspired the work.” Recounting a Black man’s experience as surveilled, the dance’s title, in the port’s mouth, also suggests that succor is at hand. The final image of Gray in abbreviated silver shorts implies Queerness as an underlying theme. Shielding his eyes with a hand a voice repeats “It’s not the end.”
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In Ayeno Elson’s Part Song/Immortal Life the slow-moving (“time-intensive,” notes Elson) characters live in their own internal worlds. Elson, born in Okinawa, Japan, is seemingly Butoh-influenced. For most of the dance, two performers move incrementally, save for quick hops or turns, rare and unexpected moments that are savored.
Amelia Heintzelman, a figure with long, curly black hair costumed in dark purple, walks backward onto the stage from near the church doors. Turning toward the audience her eyes are downcast and her body slumps. Caught in what appears to be an unforgiving world of pain, her presence recalls the suffering of Jesus.
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evan ray suzuki steps onto the stage from the back of the church. Slowly he raises one evocative arm to the sounds of gurgling water. Heintzelman and suzuki stay in their own distant and distinct areas, accompanied by an unseen orchestral trio tucked on the 2nd floor balcony. The score includes squeaky door sounds, breathing, knocking, string plucking, and flute trills.
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Near the very end of the dance, Jade Manns, clad handsomely in bright tomato-red (Kate Williams designed) walks slowly backward --a theme this evening-- accompanied by an intense, extended note. Manns skips forward and back with big, flowing movements that trace the edge of the stage, until her bent leg kicks swiftly forward. As our attention is piqued, the lights inexplicably go out. This fully embodied dancer in red was on the brink of telling us something new.
