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Music and Meaning

I’ve been thinking about content for a while now. Without it, blogs, websites, and other social media die. But content, as an adjective, has a different meaning: to be pleased, gratified or even, complacent. It is also the root of the adjective contentious.

Performance

Complexions Contemporary Ballet

Place

Zellerbach Theatre, Penn Live Arts, Philadelphia, October 18, 2024

Words

Merilyn Jackson

Complexions Contemporary Ballet at Penn Live Arts, Philadelphia. Photograph courtesy Penn Live Arts

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Last weekend’s Complexions Contemporary Ballet show at Penn Live Arts led me to think about content and meaning. This program’s content not only made me unsatisfied by its overall lack of meaning, it left me feeling contentious. Looking back at what I saw in the company’s 2003 Philadelphia debut (then Annenberg) and then again in 2015 at the Prince Theater, I’m coming to realize that what puzzles me, in part, are the choreographer’s musical choices.  

Dwight Rhoden and Desmond Richardson both began their dance careers at Alvin Ailey and went on to found Complexions in 1996. They each continued to dance dazzling roles. The interracial company sustains their hallmark style which I’d now characterize as having vague intent and speed over nuance.

While they are now retired from the stage, they continue to run the company. Programming is an art and this touring program had a gathering sameness. No scenery, black backdrop, even Michael Korsch’s lighting lacked variations. The most steam I saw was from the moist (musty smelling) fogger that accompanied each of the five works.

Two programmatic exceptions were Odetta’s plaintive song “Another Man Done Gone,” which gave deep meaning to “Gone,” and Jillian Davis’s solo in “Elegy.” An excerpt from “Bach 25” had its 18 dancers rush out en masse in soft ballet slippers in nonstop movement that matched the notes of the music, eventually growing into a line dance. One image stuck with me—a trio of company women dancing static, angular steps that resembled William Forsythe’s full-stop phrases.

Complexions Contemporary Ballet at Penn Live Arts, Philadelphia. Photograph by Taylor Craft

Michael Cherry, Aeron Buchanan, and Angelo De Serra in Christine Darch’s emerald green leotards killed it in Rhoden’s “Gone.” Their deep sideway lunges, twists and hunched over walks gave the work a style of its own. When I saw it a decade ago, the dancers created a feeling of brotherhood. Here, De Serra commands the stage each time he appears, and together the three make a dance that celebrates individuality rather than common cause. 

To Vivaldi’s “The Four Seasons” (Summer,) Rhoden’s “Choke” paired Christian Burse and Marissa Mattingly in a duet that was originally made for two men. Albeit superbly executed, it had the static look of a gymnastics competition.

Jillian Davis riveted the audience in Rhoden’s “Elegy.” Costumed by Christine Darch in a one shouldered asymmetrically skirted purple dress, her balletic training shone to Beethoven’s “Moonlight” sonata. She’s the tallest company artist in a company with a wide range of body types. The mostly vertical solo, replete with six-o’clock extensions, seemed made for her. Her phrases alternated smoothly between hard, angular open-legged pliés and soft, curvy attitudes and rolling torso. 

The program’s world premiere, “This Time, With Feeling,” with David Rozenblatt’s original score, left me feeling confused. Its Barry Manilow-inflected arrangement sounded kitschy and outdated to my ear. I couldn’t find the throughline in the score, nor in the dance’s series of duets. 

Complexions Contemporary Ballet in “For Crying Out Loud.” Photograph by Taylor Craft

Complexions has many terrific pieces in its repertoire, so why choose works that don’t show the breadth of a nearly 40-year-old company? With artistic advisors like Carmen de Lavallade and the incomparable former cast member, dancer, Sarita Allen, one would hope for better sense of programming. 

For instance, in “For Crying Out Loud” the company performed to U2, which just left me in tears (not the good kind). Of all the innovative music available today, this just seemed an easy-cheesy choice for a company that can soar and deserves better material. No shade to Bono, et al, but their songs provided no luft to this work. 

Yvonne Rainer wrote a book titled Feeling are Facts. I am not fully in accord with that pronouncement, and do my best to be objective in my analysis of any dance concert. But here, my feelings won out. As I rushed out of the theater, I couldn’t help thinking of Gertrude Stein’s “There was no there there.”

Merilyn Jackson

Merilyn Jackson has written on dance for the Philadelphia Inquirer since 1996 and writes on dance, theater, food, travel and Eastern European culture and Latin American fiction for publications including the New York Times, the Warsaw Voice, the Arizona Republic, Phoenix New Times, MIT’s Technology Review, Arizona Highways, Dance Magazine, Pointe and Dance Teacher, and Broad Street Review. She also writes for tanz magazin and Ballet Review. She was awarded an NEA Critics Fellowship in 2005 to Duke University and a Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Fellowship for her novel-in-progress, Solitary Host.

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