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Song and Dance

To paraphrase that great song from “A Chorus Line,” the Los Angeles-based BodyTraffic gave a concert that might best be summed up as, “Dancers 10, Choreographers, well, 3.” Indeed, the works—a world premiere by Trey McIntyre, a recent number from Matthew Neenan and a semi-world premiere by Juel D. Lane—seen on Friday at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts, suffered from literalizations, repetition and a visceral connection to the music, which was heard on tape.

Performance

BodyTraffic: Trey McIntyre's “Mayday” / Matthew Neenan's “I Forgot the Start” / Juel D. Lane's “Incense Burning On A Saturday Morning: The Maestro.”

Place

Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts, Beverly Hills, California, December 6-7, 2024

Words

Victoria Looseleaf

BodyTraffic in “Incense Burning On A Saturday Morning: The Maestro,” by Juel D. Lane. Photograph by Guzmán Rosado

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The eight dancers, however, were superb, indefatigable and, in giving every ounce of their miraculous beings to the body-centric art form, proved their mettle throughout the evening. The troupe, co-founded in 2007 by Lillian Barbeito and Tina Finkelman Berkett, and solely directed by the latter since 2020, remains a repertory company not driven by a single choreographic voice, but instead commissions acclaimed dancemakers, in this case, the above-mentioned trio. 

With BodyTraffic’s 2024-25 season dubbed, “This Song Reminds Me of You,” nostalgia was at work throughout each of the dances, beginning with McIntyre’s “Mayday,” a title meaning distress signal, and one not boding well for the opus. Having recently joined the troupe as Creative Partner, McIntyre, who has choreographed some 120 ballets, crafted an homage to the late, great singer/songwriter Buddy Holly, who died in a plane crash at age 22 in 1959.

A kind of juke box musical—sans live singing—the work’s litany of tunes, including “That’ll Be the Day,” “Peggy Sue” and “Learning the Game,” was a non-stop dance-a-thon, with each of the performers sporting Holly-type, horn-rimmed glasses throughout, the overall lighting scheme by James F. Ingalls. 

As if the spectacles weren’t enough, a toy airplane was bandied about during each number (prop design and construction by Cody Richardson and Rob Byerly), trivializing Holly’s death, with the dancers adopting occasional airplane-arm poses, as well. And while the unisons were terrific, and each dancer, who all wore Karen Young’s uninspired costume design – akin to old-time Philip Morris bellboy suits, but with bare midriffs - was pliant and acrobatically-inclined, this barrage of freneticism, which featured an incessant body-slapping motif (what else would a naked abdomen be for?), quickly grew tiresome.

It was also disheartening to watch these gorgeous movers, including Jordyn Santiago, who often executed whiz-bang solos, a high-flying Pedro Garcia, as well as Joan Rodriguez and Katie Garcia maintaining an upright composure while executing an insanely dangerous leap, honoring an artist who, yes, died way too soon, but deserved a better storytelling experience.  

Pedro Garcia and Ty Morrison in “Mayday” by Trey McIntyre. Photograph by Trey McIntyre

The storytelling in Neenan’s West Coast premiere, “I Forgot The Start” (it debuted at Philadelphia’s Penn Live Arts earlier this year), chronicled his marriage to Dito Van Reigersberg, who had battled cancer, with the pair’s trials, including getting through treatment, leading them to come out the other side as victors. Unfortunately, the work, also set to a pastiche of tunes, beginning with Sinéad O’Connor’s “In this Heart,” which had been the couple’s wedding song, again not creating a cohesive narrative.  

Teeming with unisons—occasionally hunch-backed—the group, including both Garcias, Chandler Davidson, and Rodriguez, were not helped by Márion Talán de la Rosa’s white, see-through costumes (a take on hospital gowns?), which were as distracting as they were unflattering. Nor were the performers helped by Christopher Ash’s lighting, set and video design—National Geographic-type films heralding the change of seasons, with murmurations, flora and palm trees on view. 

When orange-colored bolts of cloth reminiscent of Christo’s “The Gates,” dropped from above, framing the movers in centipede mode, this writer longed for pure movement without all of the accompanying fol-de-rol. Still, an emotive duet with the bare-chested men—Garcia and Ty Morrison—managing to generate some passion, again proving that the dancers were doing their best to outshine the choreography. 

With the raining down of confetti—or was it snow—at the work’s end adding to the cliché factor, more pas de deux, trios and solos would have been preferred to shifting line formations. 

Pedro Garcia and Ty Morrison in “I Forgot The Start” by Matthew Neenan. Photograph by Guzmán Rosado

Lines took on an entirely different meaning in Lane’s “Incense Burning On A Saturday Morning: The Maestro.” An homage to Ernie Barnes (1938-2009), the first African-American athlete (he played professional football for several years, including with the Baltimore Colts and San Diego Chargers) to become a noted painter, the dance had been seen in September, but without video projections. 

Capturing the spirit of 1970s Harlem dance halls, Barnes’ paintings making use of rich colors and sweeping lines, giving oomph and rigor to stretched limbs and exaggerated movements, which would seem to lend themselves well to the spitfire dancers of BodyTraffic. 

And so they did! With Barnes’ iconic work, “The Sugar Shack,” impetus for Lane’s choreography, a stellar Alana Jones embodied the woman in yellow (she was also Barnes’ muse), while Morrison as the dynamic painter, wielded a brush and moved around the stage as if possessed. 

When the paintings came to life through Yee Eun Nam’s video design and Michael Jarett’s lighting scheme, Lane’s choreography, incorporating contemporary and African-inspired movements, had an undeniable heft, but again, there was a disconnect, this time with Munir Zakee’s original score, a percussion feast but one that is far afield from jazz.

Here was the entire company, also featuring Anaya Gonzalez, clad in Jarrod Barnes’ vividly colored costumes, each deploying varying series of arabesques, lunges and sky-high extensions, with a dollop of neo-fouettés thrown in for good measure. A veritable highlight, Morrison also got über-jiggy, a rubbery-kneed avatar romping across the floor in a hip-hop-like squatting/deep plié pose (don’t try this at home) as if in an Olympic-like dance-off.

Tribal in nature, Lane’s choreography was the most inventive of the evening, its energy undeniable, with the ensemble and partner moves Ailey-esque and emblematic of Barnes’ fluid brush strokes. While BodyTraffic remains one of L.A.’s most visible purveyors of contemporary dance—and its members are all exceptionally gifted and possessed of beautiful lines—it might behoove the company to have more of a unifying vision. 

Yes, these three works were all story ballets, but, alas, the stories seemed to have been lost in the terpsichorean telling.

Victoria Looseleaf

Victoria Looseleaf is an award-winning, Los Angeles-based international arts journalist who covers music and dance festivals around the world. Among the many publications she has contributed to are the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, Dance Magazine and KCET’s Artbound. In addition, she taught dance history at USC and Santa Monica College. Looseleaf’s novella-in-verse, Isn't It Rich? is available from Amazon, and and her latest book, Russ & Iggy’s Art Alphabet with illustrations by JT Steiny, was recently published by Red Sky Presents. Looseleaf can be reached through X, Facebook, Instagram and Linked In, as well as at her online arts magazine ArtNowLA.

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