Heavenly Bodies

Washington, D.C.’s 100° June weather wasn’t the only thing generating heat in the city. Chamber Dance Project’s 11th annual D.C. summer season production, “Red Angels,” produced its own scorching intensity as one of this summer’s early triumphs.

Founded in 2000 in New York City by artistic director Diane Coburn Bruning and relocated to D.C. in 2014, Chamber Dance Project’s mission has been to bring together soloist-level ballet dancers from major professional companies during their lay-off periods with its own string quartet to produce outstanding dance and music programming.

Performance

Chamber Dance Project: “Red Angels,” mixed bill choreography

Place

Sidney Harman Hall, Washington D.C., June 25-27, 2025

Words

Steve Sucato

Chamber Dance Project's Peter Mazurowski in “Red Angels” by Ulysses Dove. Photograph by Rachel Malehorn

“Red Angels” exemplified that mission with an exceptional program of repertory works performed to live music, which began with an excerpt from Christian Denice’s “Dwellings.” The contemporary sock-ballet, set to Stephan Thelen’s propulsive music performed by the Chamber Dance Project’s string quartet, was danced with drama and grace by its cast of six dancers. Most captivating was the velvety dancing of the muse-like trio of Hannah Bruce, Misha Glouchkova, and Crystal Serrano.

After an engaging musical interlude of Grammy Award-winning composer Charlton Singleton's “Testimony” by the string quartet, the evening’s sole premiere, Jorge Amarante’s “Tension Por Vos” took the stage.

Set to music by Argentine composer Julian Peralta and danced by Iris Dávila and Marius Morawski, the duet told of a manipulative relationship between two people attracted to each other. Dávila and Morawski appeared from opposite stage wings, shimmying backwards across the stage on their behinds until they met center stage and pushed their backs together to stand upright. They then moved through Amarante’s tango-infused choreography that spoke of desire and dominance.

Brisk partnered lifts and aggressively pressed together bodies created a growing tension between the dancers that culminated in a grim closing image of Morawski lifting Dávila straight up in front of him as he placed one of his hands in front of her mouth as if to silence her. Dávila’s eyes big with terror, she stared out into the audience, her legs pedaling in the air as if trying to flee.

Iris Dávila and Marius Morawski in “Tensión Por Vos” by Jorge Amarante. Photograph by Rachel Malehorn

The emotional darkness of “Tension Por Vos” gave way to the heavenly bodies of Ulysses Dove’s masterwork, “Red Angels,” which closed the program’s first half. Choreographed in 1994, the D.C. premiere of the contemporary ballet for four dancers felt like a stylistic precursor to more recent and bolder ballets of the same ilk by choreographers Alonzo King and Dwight Rhoden.

Sharp and sleek, Dove’s mercurial and outstretched movement for the ballet tapped into the cool, driving vibe of Richard Einhorn’s composition “Maxwell’s Demon,” for electric violin, played with vigor by CDP’s principal musician, Sally McLain.

Costumed in crimson red, the dancer pairings of Tamako Miyazaki with Peter Mazurowski and Patric Palkens with Serrano each brought a level of sculptural elegance to their dancing, especially in showy demi-solos by each that began with them strutting like fashion models down a runway.

The program’s second half opened with a reprise of Coburn Bruning’s seminal work, “Prufrock.” Co-created with theater director Matt Torney, the piece was set to an original electronic sound score by James Bigbee Garver, who performed it live as Torney recited T.S. Eliot’s 1915 poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” with an Irish brogue.

The work’s five dancers, costumed in black men’s suits, ties, and bowler hats, appeared to dwell in a shadowy and surreal world that faded in and out of view as pools of light illuminated the stage, revealing peculiar images of the dancers before they receded into darkness again.

Bruning’s inventive choreography paralleled the mood and emotion contained in Eliot’s poem, which describes a middle-aged man consumed by self-doubt, indecision, and social anxieties.

It began with Palkens and dancer Lope Lim seated on stools, leaning sideways, and moving their limbs back and forth as if running in slow motion on air. It was the first in a string of snapshot vignettes that appeared like something out of a fever dream. This kind of bizarre and clever imagery continued with dancers sitting on the stage and pressing their chins into stool seats, and bounding side to side with arms swaying to and fro, looking like overdressed speed skaters.

A multi-layered work dense with striking imagery, “Prufrock” was a superbly danced gem.

Chamber Dance Project's Patric Palkens and Tamako Miyazaki in “Prufrock” by Diane Coburn Bruning. Photograph by Rachel Malehorn

Coburn Bruning’s audience-pleasing “Songs by Cole” was just that. The Broadwayesque ballet was danced to a suite of songs by Cole Porter, performed live by a trio of guest jazz musicians led by celebrated vocalist Lena Seikaly. A ballet of quirky elegance, style, and humor, it produced many entertaining moments, none more memorable than Palkens, Lim, and Morawski in cowboy costumes, tossing “howdy ma’am” tip-of-the-hat nods at Seikaly and shooting squirt guns in the air to Porter’s “Don’t Fence Me In.”

The evening concluded with a special excerpt from Coburn Bruning’s “Four Men” (June 25 show only) in honor of Palkens’ pending retirement. In it, he danced himself to exhaustion in an athletic and acrobatic solo, flinging his body in the air and diving onto the stage floor with abandon. It was a fitting showcase of Palkens’ impressive talent and an exciting conclusion to CDP’s impressive production.

Steve Sucato

Steve Sucato is a former dancer turned arts writer/critic living in Cleveland, Ohio. His writing credits include articles and reviews on dance and the arts for The Plain Dealer, Buffalo News, Erie Times-News, Dance Magazine, Pointe, Dance International, and web publications Critical Dance, DanceTabs (London), and Fjord Review. Steve is chairman emeritus of the Dance Critics Association and the creator of the arts website artsair.art.

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