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As anyone can see, dance is bodies in motion. Ronald K. Brown’s choreography is the kind that makes you feel this truth. I can’t stand still to watch her work with a rich mix of African and American modern dance. What happens on stage is so supple and alive, so irresistibly kinetic, that you may not realize how often Brown shows the opposite: motionless bodies, still bodies lying on the ground or being carried by others.
When Brown’s company returned to the Evidence Joyce Theater on Tuesday, I noticed those still bodies because I know Brown recovers from a stroke that left him partially paralyzed. All three pieces the company offers are at least 20 years old, so the still images in them aren’t new – they just resonate new. They were there from the start, giving weight and depth to the qualities that improve and rejuvenate every Proof of Evidence program, including this one.
The current company is on the young side, with a high percentage of new and new faces. Christopher Salango doesn’t look like a younger version of assistant art director Arcell Cabuag; assertive but without arrogance, she dances like him. Joyce Edwards is a grounded and explosive powerhouse. They and other fresh blood are supported by more seasoned guest artists: former and returning Evidence members Shayla Alayre Caldwell and Randall Riley, both outstanding and Alvin Ailey’s standout Daniel S. Harder.
Works in the program carry clear messages, sometimes in words, as with Brown. In “Ebony Magazine: To a Village” (1996), which deals with how blacks present themselves and how they are perceived, women ask “Do you see what I see?” and a man (Brown), preaching against superficiality, calling to prayer. In “Come Ye” (2002), we hear Nina Simone’s voice invoking the power of prayer and the struggle for peace, and we see images of sit-ins, marches and civil rights heroes. Both Simone’s voice and Fela Kuti’s voice, whose songs are on the soundtrack, says “Amen”.
But Brown’s choreography is also full of indirect meanings. There are modestly clasped hands behind the back, open hands, open hips. There are horizontal processions, diagonal ones, lines of dancers sweeping the stage in spirals that seem to be clearing the stage. There are ways these different organizations of the stage often coexist and seem to work at different time scales, slower or faster, and the dancers continue to join in from the wings adding their voices. First of all, there’s the rhythm, the layered grooves – the dancers continue to relentlessly drive the grooves while those heroic scenes from “Come Ye” play on the back wall.
And besides all that bountiful life, there is a moment in “Ebony Magazine” when a dancer (harder on this show) lays dead and the others gather around her. And there are moments at the beginning and end of “Upside Down” (1998) when a dancer reaches out (again harder) and the others lift her up and carry her on their shoulders.
I’m sorry that I didn’t see Brown come on stage during the salute on Tuesday, as Cabuag did, to give us the grateful applause and reassure us with his presence. But at this point, the dancers had already made it clear that their work was in safe hands.
Ronald K. Brown/The Evidence
at the Joyce Theater on Sunday; joyce.org.
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