Don't Look TooGood

When viewing a work by Pam Tanowitz, it pays to look closely. Beyond the precision and fleet feet of her Cunningham-trained dancers, there is often another layer to discover. She refers to pre-existing works of art and literature (recently T. S. Eliot’s “Four Quartets” and the biblical Song of Solomon) using movement to reveal and remix their elements. For those who prize an intellectual exercise, Tanowitz is Olympic Gold. So it’s a surprise that her premiere for the Little Island inaugural summer performance series asks us simply to gaze at the surface. In “Day for Night,” the looking is everything.

Performance

“Day for Night” by Pam Tanowitz

Place

Little Island, New York, NY, July 19, 2024

Words

Karen Hildebrand

Lindsey Jones, Maile Okamura, and Marc Crousillat in Pam Tanowitz's “Day for Night.” Photograph by Liz Devine

There’s a lot to see. A centerpiece trio of Marc Crousillat, Lindsey Jones, and Maile Okamura enters colorfully dressed by Reid Bartelme & Harriet Jung. The three prance like colts in a pen, bouncing from one foot to the other, swinging into tight one-armed turns. Their steps are light, crisp, and impressively odd. They bound forward with pique hops, then lean back to pause. With arms thrust in fourth position, Okamura charges forward, lands on both feet in first, then twists to look behind her. When she sinks into a wide plié in second, she pauses to give her hip a swivel. Jones, in standout orange sorbet, occasionally breaks away to chassé in second round the perimeter. When she unfurls a lanky développé, her limbs seem to fill the entire space.

Little Island literally hovers above the Hudson River, and the open air Amph theater is cut out on one side to show a slice of water, at first lit by the sunset, then gradually darkening to reflect the sparkling New Jersey skyline. Justin Ellington’s sound design invites this setting into the production itself—a foghorn and water lapping against the hull of a ship blend with the tugboats and dinner cruises that float by. Is that call of a seagull real or recorded? A woman’s voice reciting shipping coordinates and weather conditions pipes up intermittently.

Maile Okamura in Pam Tanowitz's “Day for Night.” Photograph by Liz Devine

The featured trio brings an impressive set of credentials to this stage. Okamura, a Tanowitz veteran who danced with Mark Morris for 25 years, is often at the center. Crousillat, formerly with Trisha Brown Dance, lifts her as she takes a stiff Charlie Chaplin first position. When Okamura and Jones, also a former Brown dancer, bourrée in place, shoulder to shoulder, Crousillat absurdly squeezes between like he’s parting a crowd. Crousillat and Jones make a bar with their arms, and Okamura folds herself over it, face first, arms dangling like a shirt hung out to dry.

Two additional dancing pairs enter as the evening deepens. Victor Lozano and longtime Tanowitz collaborator, Melissa Toogood, in matching dark jumpsuits; Brian Lawson and Morgan Amirah Burns in vividly striped tunics. The expanded cast allows the dancers to explore spaces outside the stage. Lozano loops through the audience seating aisles; I spot Okamura and Crousillat perched on scaffolding above the stage. Davison Scandrett’s lighting becomes something of a character on its own, suddenly bathing the stage in the mood-shifting blue gray of a digital screen, then changing to a hyper bright wash. Like a flip of a light switch, the space goes red, now bright, now neon lime, now bright. The dancers carry on regardless.

Victor Lozano in Pam Tanowitz's “Day for Night.” Photograph by Liz Devine

Tanowitz consistently brings back the original motif of prancing, the circling chassés, languid développés. Facings change, feet stomp. There seems no end to the possibilities. My eyes begin to cross, yet there are nice surprises. Toogood and Lozano have a duet where they walk together hand over hand like a skating pair, then in tandem sit into their right hips. Three dancers line up on relevé, arms in fifth, then the center dancer crumples to the floor as if she has fainted. Okamura awkwardly jumps on the back of a crouching Lawson.

When Toogood and Lozano take bows, the audience thinks the show is over and applauds. But the remaining cast dances on, perhaps even raising the temperature a notch. Eventually there are more bows, but now we hesitate, hands midway to a clap. In the end, everyone lies prone in tidy sardine rows. The house lights go up. Some of the audience begins to file out. Eventually the dancers one by one rise and exit. Attention getting and anti-climactic at the same time, they don’t really get the applause they’re due.

And yet, the evening’s not over. We’re invited to an epilogue by Toogood in the Glade. We snake our way up a ramp and stairs onto a grassy knoll where she is a vision in silvery sequins, moving to music with a single poignant lyric on repeat: “Don’t go wasting your emotion; lay all your love on me.” At the end, she bows, pauses, then begins again twice more, a mechanical ballerina atop a wind-up music box. It’s a kiss goodnight after an enchanting evening.

Karen Hildebrand

Karen Hildebrand is former editorial director for Dance Magazine and served as editor in chief for Dance Teacher for a decade. An advocate for dance education, she was honored with the Dance Teacher Award in 2020. She follows in the tradition of dance writers who are also poets (Edwin Denby, Jack Anderson), with poetry published in many literary journals and in her book, Crossing Pleasure Avenue (Indolent Books). She holds an MFA from the Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. Originally from Colorado, she lives in Brooklyn.

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