"The Myth Project III: American Dreaming" at The Warehouse
Site-specific At Its Best
— San Diego.com (3/24/2008)
Photo: Elazar Harel
Kristopher Ross and Justin Viernes in
“The Myth Project III: American Dreaming”
Inside a darkened warehouse under the San Diego-Coronado Bridge, four dancers dressed in blue uniforms by "Dickies" chug and twist black boots over a concrete floor. Mirroring a grainy slide of oilrigs projected on panel, they bend at the waist and stretch up and down in unison like one heavy machine. Metallic clanging echoes up into the rafters.
"Myth Project III, American Dreaming" is the third in a series of site-specific events that questions ancient myths. The industrial strength dances that rolled and drilled like steamrollers and jackhammers at an "unnamed" warehouse earlier this month followed the "Myth" canon, but took full advantage of the location and surroundings to further the artistic experience. The third installment of Myth Project was site-specific dance theater at its best.
Created by Patricia Rincon, in collaboration with visual artists Terri Hughes and Marcela Villasenor, and composer Don Nichols, Myth III was a fine balance of elements that recounted our cultural and political history; more important, the program challenged us to see that history repeats itself.
The sold-out program evoked surreal images of workers, immigrants and violence, but also freedom, tolerance and acceptance. It featured Deven P. Brawley, a longtime Rincon dancer who's also performed with Michael Mizerany, Malashock and The PGK Project. He also heads d'shire dance, San Diego's first all male dance company. But forget the biography - you'll never forget his fire-red Mohawk and lanky intensity.
Together with Keely Campbell, Kristopher D. Ross and Justin Viernes, Brawley held the audience captive. They were a fearless maintenance crew on a mission with personalities that grew on you. And they could tour jete and spin on concrete. Put on your work boots and give it a whirl in your garage some day to see how tough it is.
Early in the program, the dancers performed excruciating deep plies, only to be interrupted when a hydraulic lift rolled through. Without hesitation, Viernes had unsuspecting viewers sitting on the floor move out of the way. About 50 viewers were lucky enough to snag a chair in a raised "reserved" section. Dozens more stood against posts or peeked from the little bar tucked in the back. Yes, there was a delicious selection of beer and wines available, as well as food from a small kitchen.
Performed without an intermission, the program moved quickly. (I stood up for the entire performance. Still, the time zipped by). The dancers interacted with slides projected on three movable white panels. By moving the panels, the dancers carved the space and created shadows and new vanishing points that suggested a building boom as well as crowded living conditions.
Campbell was woman versus the machine in her dance with a shiny chrome sculpture. Engaging, but it was also the one section that needed editing. She contorted and hung over the metal like a child playing on a harmless jungle gym, but just as quick the metal became a deadly electric chair. Campbell also rolled out an edible sculpture of the Statue of Liberty and waived a gun around. Myth III didn't omit any big social issue. Still, politics never felt overdone.
And there were dances about love. In a trio with Campbell, Ross and Brawley, their embrace and configuration were wonderfully accented by the music. Tension soared as they shifted into beautiful pendulum arm swings and dramatic runs and leaps, until Ross caught a horizontal Campbell in mid-flight. Then he left her.
Nichols' sound score and layers of dialogue tied the passion, politics, and cultural points together in a very simple way. Sound quality was phenomenal. The voices and emotions felt real, not read from a script. Some of the comments were light and funny. Others tapped into the darker side of history and fueled dances reminiscent of the evening news.
In one chilling section, dancers arced on their bellies then rose to form a single line. Each tried to be first, clawing their way through the serpentine line to the front; it was that deeply American image seen in every decade - immigrants fighting for jobs and respect.
Another highlight had Viernes desperately climbing a wall. Of course it symbolized a man trying to scale the Mexican border fence, but also Everyman's effort to climb higher, to get a raise, to by a house, or just stay alive. Poor Anthony Diaz was supposed to do the piece, but he suffered a knee injury, so an intrepid Viernes jumped in last minute and climbed with gusto.
For the finale, dancers portrayed farm workers toiling in a hot dusty field. They hefted big bags over their shoulders and poured the contents into rows. But the rows were multi-colored rice, and to the exotic sounds of Gamelan, they swirled the colors into a homogenized mix. Young people from the audience recited their personal American dreams and joined the dancers to create a beautiful sea of multi-ethnic bodies and voices.
"The Myth Project III: American Dreaming" 2008 continues March 28-30 at the Schoolhouse, an 1883 historic landmark in Encinitas. That radical change in environment will transform this production, which is what makes site-specific work so unpredictable and exciting. Presented by the Patricia Rincon Dance Collective. Seating is limited.
Kris Eitland
SanDiego.com
March 24, 2008
(see online version)
"... the 'Myth Project III' was a subtle and beautiful success."
-- San Diego CityBeat Magazine
Photo: Marcela Villasenor. "Myth Project III" (2008)
San Diego CityBeat Magazine
The Kinsee Report (3/18/2008)
"Myth Project III: American Dreaming"
Saturday night was busy for Patricia Rincon, who was running around The Warehouse in Barrio Logan (a private venue with an unpublished address) trying to herd the sold-out crowd into place just minutes before The Myth Project III: American Dreaming began.
The site-specific, multimedia performance piece that followed was entrancing. For the opening segment, Rincon’s Dance Collective (www.rincondance.org) rolled and leaped around the dusty concrete floor, moving in ways that symbolized hard, monotonous work while a shadow of an oil pump teetered up and down like a possessed seesaw in the background. With the help of visual artists Teri Hughes and Marcela Villasenor and composer Don Nichols, Rincon and her dancers broke down the myth of the so-called American Dream and touched on political issues like immigration while maintaining an aesthetic that even the most red-necked immigrant hater could appreciate.
In short, 'The Myth Project III' was a subtle and beautiful success. Rincon and crew head over to their next site, a historic landmark schoolhouse in Encinitas at the corner of Fourth and F streets at 8 p.m. March 29 and 30. Don’t wait around to buy tickets; if it’s anything like the last performance, they will sell out.
Kinsee Morlan
San Diego CityBeat Magazine
March 18, 2008
(see online version)
Photo: Elazar Harel
Yu Dance Theater at Blurred Borders Dance Festival.
Blurred Borders Dance Festival at City College's Saville Theatre
(Presented by Patricia Rincon Dance Collective and Sushi Performance and Visual Art)
A review
SanDiego.com
June 12, 2007
"Using martial arts as a muse for a dance theater work could easily fall into a mess of clichés, but in "Swallow Touches the Water," Yu Dance Theatre successfully bends the discipline to create surreal images of physical combat, connections and nationalism.
"Yu's San Diego premiere is one of three offerings at the Blurred Borders Dance Festival this weekend. Curated by Patricia Rincon, this eighth installment of the fest is a full evening, more than two hours, with Yu, the Patricia Rincon Dance Collective and actor-dancer Rodney Mason.
"Yu's company director, Cheng-Chieh Yu, has performed her work internationally and is an associate professor at UCLA. A native of Taiwan, her work is highly influenced by Chinese disciplines. The title, "Swallow Touches the Water," refers to a movement phrase in the Chinese martial art form, Ba Gua Zhang. For her dance, Yu twists the familiar circling face-offs and fluid hand poses and takes the audience on a strange journey. It opens with Yu circling a light pole supported by a tire. She jabs and stretches into a deep fighting stance as pairs of sparring dancers appear in a video by Carol McDowell, projected onto a scrim and the back wall. Live dancers mirror the movement, and the layering of action moves your eyes all over the stage. Kenny Endo's divine Taiko drum score rumbles like thunder and helicopter blades, but also scrapes and whispers like leafless trees in winter.
"Dancers Jeremy Hale and Arianne Hoffman are a fine-tuned machine in a riveting sequence that incorporates a tire attached to pole - like a giant steamrolling protractor. On his back, Hale whirls the tire around as Hoffman bravely hops over and falls under the speeding pole before it whacks her leg or takes her head off. The near-miss tension is fantastic. (There should be a warning to youngsters not to attempt this trick at home). The blond pony tailed Hoffman is hilarious as she barks and screeches with much spittle a distorted version of the German anthem. She sounds like a Chinese Daffy Duck and never stops singing as her comrades rock her like a seesaw.
"Symbolic images of blind nationalism abound as dancers fold and fondle beach towels with stars and circles that look like ragged flags. When they rest their heads on triangle puffs you can't help but see the bundle passed to young widows and parents of dead soldiers. The flag symbolism is blatant and moments of "Butohesque" slow motion can slog along, yet Yu's polished dancers and scenic design by Peter Melville are visually stunning.
"In final sections, dancers Hale and Sebastian Peters-Lazaro twist with a strange pink towel covering their heads and stretch into glorious sculptured balances. They conjure heart-wrenching images of hand-to-hand-combat, caskets, and young men clinging to life.
"Rincon's premiere of "Borderline" is an adventure energized by cartoons, video games and a wacky score by Don Nichols, who's literally a doctor of experimental music and weird sounds at UCSD. To the whoosh of an air balloon, dancer Deven Brawley pops out of a billowing parachute with a spiky shock of day-glow red hair and aviator goggles - he's a hybrid comic book hero or lost sci-fi mutant in a strange land. He flails and prances to sound clips from Bugs Bunny, Star Wars, the Beatles and Abbott and Costello. Brawley creates a fun commanding character, and let's hope we see him really shine with more actual dancing in the sequel, Borderline II. Fantasy slams into reality when Brawley exits through the stage door, a brilliant ending.
"LA-based Rodney Mason is an actor/dancer who's played Rome in "Rome and Jewels," the hip-hop version of Romeo and Juliet. But he's best known as the droll British socialite "Tony Sinclair," a fictional spokesman for Tanqueray Gin. He didn't make it to Thursday's opening show as he was filming yet another commercial. (BkSOUL, Collective Purpose and the past)(modern performance duo with Don Nichols saved the day with an excerpt from their upcoming show "The Movement," set for next weekend at UCSD).
"On Friday, Mason arrived with "Origins: My Mother's Son," an autobiographical collage of spoken word, hip hop dancing, video clips and a few lines from his gin guy character. With a wide-grin, the stocky Mason tells how he got the nickname Duck Butt Baby the III, how he hid imaginary friends from his mother and cared for his dying grandfather. In a poignant soliloquy, he becomes his grandfather and declares, "My sickness is from my sins." This is a one-man show, and several times it feels like the end when Mason leaves the stage between sections. He may want to tighten these gaps before taking this work on tour. Still, he's a loveable, gifted gabber and storyteller. His "I used to hate black" ditty is funny, as is the darkly comical video of a white corporate "suit" planning a modern African slave trade who remarks that Zulus are nothing but trouble. Mason's memories of Marine boot camp and the Gulf War round out his performance and are an apt introduction for Yu's surreal view of combat that follows in the second half of the program."
Kris Eitland
SanDiego.com
June 12, 2007
THANK YOU ...
Funding for the not-for-profit Patricia Rincon Dance Collective is provided by The City of San Diego Commission for Arts and Culture, the John and Beverly Stauffer Foundation, San Diego City College World Cultures Department, San Diego City College Department of Visual and Performing Arts, The City of Encinitas Community Grant Program with a matching grant from the Mizel Family Foundation, the University of California Institute for Research in the Arts, and private donors.
You can contact the Patricia Rincon
Dance Collective at:
PRDC
438 Fulvia Street
Encinitas, CA 92024
USA
Phone: 760. 632. 5340
Thanks for looking in. Please check back periodically for performance & company updates. We welcome your questions, comments, observations!
Here's our email address: rincondance@pacbell.net
All the best,
Patricia & Company |
