Audience Reviews

AUDIENCE REVIEW: Letter to Clymene and Clymove Dance

Company:
Clymove Dance Company

Performance Date:
March 19-22

Freeform Review:

Dear Clymene: 

I first saw your company at Ailey's for the celebration for Sarita Allen. I had gone only because I knew Sarita from Kathy Grants's Pilates Studio, and through a mutual friend and Ailey Dancer, Bernard Lias, as well as her unforgettable dances with Ailey and Complexions. I had no idea what the evening would consist of but, because of her, I knew it would be something special.

I told people later that it was as if Michelangelo's figures stepped off the wall onto the dance floor. There is something you do with lighting and the human form that is breathtaking. It is moving sculpture, and shows off the beauty of the heart, fused with women's figures, as they move through space. You have the courage to have your dancers be so still, and move at times so gently, without feeling that you have to "keep it moving," which actually gives it all the more strength. Then the choreography of the bodies, connecting and evolving shapes and holds, releases and leaps are electrifying. Beats from another sphere.

Recently, a choreographer explained his dances because he said audiences often do not get the meaning of modern dances. Yours do not need explanation. You have the genius to probe the psyche and have your dancers become symbols from the subconscious, creating the landscape of archetypes that are at our core. The first piece was imprinted from the mind's origins and primitive awareness, like you pulled it from the depths of evolution. I have been following a number of companies and the only ones I've seen, which also have unique and powerful visions, are Limón and Dance Theater of Harlem. Yours is absolutely stunning. 

Your solos pieces have a common theme, bound in some net, a cage, looking for escape, freedom, finding what seems like joy in a sensual discovery of self, only to still be bound at the end. I thought your piece Whiskey Noir could be Blanche Dubois before Kowalski, or after. The last group piece I first thought of as Marilyn Monroe's cocktail party, then falling into all the voices in her head, the personalities struggling for dominance as she careened towards the end. Then it became something else. Absolutely delightful. And who said dancers can't act? These are all just random thoughts that ran through my head, not to be taken seriously.

You are an incredible addition to the history of dance.         

Sincerely, Michael Maher
 

Author:
Michael Maher