Incubating New Work

Kaatsbaan Cultural Park in New York’s Hudson River Valley presented a program of new works over the final weekend in September as part of its 2024 Annual Festival. The program highlighted Kaatsbaan’s mission as an incubator of new work by providing artist residencies at its state-of-the-art facilities and living spaces. This kind of residential support is essential to the arts ecosystem encouraging artistic innovation, collaboration, and excellence.

Performance

Kaatsbaan Annual Festival 2024, featuring Limón Dance Company, Boca Tuya, Music From The Sole

Place

Kaatsbaan Cultural Park, Tivoli, New York, September 28, 2024

Words

Karen Greenspan

Limón Dance Company performing at Kaatsbaan Annual Festival. Photograph by Jack Baran

The Limón Dance Company previewed a new commission by Bessie Awardee Kayla Farrish, a capable new voice in the field. The untitled work is inspired by two lost creations of José Limón from a residency in Mexico City in 1951. “Redes” (Nets), a representation of unity and collective strength, and “El Grito” (The Scream), an awakening of consciousness and freedom, exemplify José Limón’s social awareness and commentary as an artist of color. Farrish, with roots as an African American woman from the south, connected with the spirit and energy of these works using archival photos and writings to develop her own choreographic expression of the themes. Farrish has obvious skill in sculpting groups and individuals in legible movement tableaux, and the company’s dancing is admirable. Of note is the strong female duet stunningly performed by Mariah Gravelin and Lauren Twomley. I had hoped for a work of a more personal nature. The company has already presented several new commissions over the last few years—high intensity group pieces tackling similar themes.

The NYC-based company, Boca Tuya, led by choreographer and director Omar Román De Jesús presented a duet for two men called “Like Those Playground Kids at Midnight.” With technically powerful and artistically nuanced dancers, Boca Tuya delivers thought-provoking work for mature audiences. De Jesús defines himself as a queer, puertorriqueño artist, and this duet, performed by De Jesús and Ian Spring, further mines the complicated territory of love relationships. Part love duet part wrestling match, the dance is a highly charged physical negotiation of attraction, resistance, vulnerability, and control. The two dancers were well-matched for the physical and emotional intensity of the choreography with its acrobatic demands and sensitive partnering.

Boca Tuya in “Like Those Playground Kids at Midnight.” Photograph by Jack Baran

Music From The Sole infused the evening with its refreshing, irresistible energy. This ensemble, in which every dancer is a musician and most of the musicians dance, calls itself a tap dance and live music company that celebrates tap’s roots in the African diaspora. Led by Brazilian tap dancer and choreographer Leonardo Sandoval and composer and bassist Gregory Richardson, the 10 dancers and musicians create a sonic tapestry through the physical activity and artistry of their dancing in addition to their instrument playing.

In this new work, still untitled and in development, the tap boards are laid out onstage, zigzagging around home furnishings and musical instruments like rooms and hallways inside a home. A performer walks onstage with his cellphone, sits down at a desk to write in his diary, and turns on some music through his phone. The others stroll in casually—a couple saunters in immersed in conversation, some sit down in various furnished spaces and lace-up their tap shoes, and others sit down to play their instruments. It feels like a jam session at someone’s home, and we in the audience have come to the party.

With Music From The Sole, the dancing is treated as a line of percussion—part of the music-making. The dancers create an endless symphony of sound qualities and textures using tap shoes, stocking feet, and various forms of body percussion. They even produce multiple lines of percussion simultaneously—dancing one complex set of rhythms with their feet and playing another on hand-held instruments.

Music From The Sole at Works & Process at the Guggenheim. Photograph by Elyse Mertz

The performers’ roles are amazingly fluid. At any moment, Orlando Hernández leaves the drum set and takes off on a free-flying tap riff. Lead musician Richardson jumps in with a little soft shoe in sneakers. The big surprise is when lead dancer Sandoval sits down with a guitar and plays a gentle lullaby singing in Portuguese. Backed up by the instrumentalists and joined by a dancing ensemble performing slow-motion body percussion, the intimate number culminates sweetly with two dancers partnered up in a romantic slow dance.

An instrumental interlude showcases the accomplished musicians in the room unleashing soaring jazz solos that take your breath away. The dancers return with renewed energy, dancing silently on the Marley floor and then jumping onto the platforms, leaping from room to room with their merrymaking.

Their contagious spirit made me hungry for more. Two nights later, I had the opportunity to see Music From The Sole again thanks to another key player in the network of support for new dance work. Works & Process previewed the piece at the Guggenheim Museum. To my delight and amazement, it had already evolved further. As part of the show, audience members, upon entering the theater, were invited onstage by circulating ensemble members to walk on the tap boards and tour the set-up of their creative universe.

Karen Greenspan

Karen Greenspan is a New York City-based dance journalist and frequent contributor to Natural History Magazine, Dance Tabs, Ballet Review, and Tricycle among other publications. She is also the author of Footfalls from the Land of Happiness: A Journey into the Dances of Bhutan, published in 2019.

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