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| Li, in "Tome" © Craig Schreiner |
by Susan Kepecs
Li Chiao Ping Dance presented Armature: in media res, the final
installment of the company’s twenty-year retrospective, at Overture’s Promenade
Hall last weekend (Dec. 10-13 – I attended on Dec. 11). Li is a powerful performer and a major force
in the world of second-wave postmodern choreographers. Her modus operandi is intellectual and kinetic,
achingly personal and/or oddly abstract. Her idiosyncratic vocabulary melds
a buff, angular, egalitarian aesthetic with a quasi-classical countercurrent. Autobiographical solos, dances devised over
spoken-word works, and dada-esque ensemble un-ballets are her bailiwick.
Only one piece on this program, “Past Forward,” which I
described after its 2006 premiere as a happy demon dance (for three), fell flat
– the dancers were strong, but the work itself this time around struck me as simply
a vehicle for Li’s movement style, lacking the meaty content that defines most
of her oeuvre.
The rest of the bill was compelling, featuring dances old and new that I was delighted to see again, or to experience for the first
time. “Aqueducks,” an absurd
divertissement excerpted from Li’s 2010 holiday un-ballet, The Knotcracker, lacked the layers of intellectual nuances that
prevailed elsewhere in this program, but it exemplified Li’s razor-sharp sense
of humor – and in these dark times if you can make your audience laugh at a
postmodern dance concert, you’re onto something.
“Cline,” choreographed this year, was built around the
company’s six current core dancers plus Li, whose powerful presence bookended
the corps performance. Like “Past Forward,” “Cline,” a minimalist
piece, was essentially a vehicle for Li’s vocbulary. But its formal structure was engagingly
complex, built like a Balanchine ensemble ballet with groups of dancers crossing
in space while executing different but related moves, or moving in unison, or mirroring
each other in pairs and trios. Sets of
Li-isms – spin, fall, fling, run; rollover, shoulder stand, push-pull, carve
through space – meshed seamlessly with artifice-less balletic references
(little coupe jeté turns; a promenade in low arabesque; brief pas de
deux with small, low lifts).
Li excerpted three substantive solos, strung together
like pearls on a string of dancing soliloquys, from her autobiographical exposé
Yellow River, originally an evening-length solo program that premiered in
San Francisco in 1991 and which she performed herself. I’ve seen extracts from this work before, but
never so many at once. Taken together,
these dances deftly dissected the Chinese-American experience. East met west; superstition clashed with
science. Li ran in place, center stage, spouting a string of old wives’ tales –
a metaphysical net from which she tried to break free. The following solo, titled “I can feel the
rings” – set to a remarkable field recording of Chinese Gypsy women recorded by
Li’s father – was set on Toronto-based guest artist Susan Lee, whose grasp of
its content was primordial; dancing as if driven by external forces, she exposed
a veiled edge of violence shot through with pleas to invisible deities. From traditional China the story lept to the
modern West; the Mozart-driven “Exact and Precise,” danced by LCPD veteran Liz
Sexe, was playful, with patterns that repeated but became more complex – dance as
music made visible, as Balanchine liked to say. Finally, “Tome” featured Li, small but mighty,
with a big old dictionary that served as a low pedestal on which she pivoted,
or crouched, or balanced on one foot in penché, working leg in low arabesque – so hard!
– while reciting mathematical
constructs.
“Refrain,” choreographed in1999 (though I’ve never seen it before), was bravely performed by Megan Thompson, who’s danced with LCPD on and
off for years. She wore a deconstructed
tutu of the sort Li often uses to signal her un-ballet genre – red tulle pinned
in odd spots over a burgundy-toned leotard.
A round spotlight like a full moon projected on the backdrop hightened this
dramatic – ok, operatic – dance, set (what else?) to Wagner. Balletic components – cambrés, port de bras,
second position pliés – were channeled through Li’s angular style. Thompson’s ironic facial expressions
underscored the tongue-in-cheek intent of this piece.
“Gó” (1995), an un-ballet named for the ancient Chinese
board game played with black and white stones, underwent slight modifications
in the early 2000s and then disappeared from Li’s active repertory. The 2015 version, “Gó Redux,” was mostly its
sassy old self – a double whammy that deconstructs ballet both avant-garde and
nineteenth century classical. With dancers in black halter tops, little white tutus,
and combat boots, this witty work flaunts – in Li’s vocabulary – the rhythmic,
tribal thrust of the 1913 Stravinsky / Nijinsky collaboration Rite of Spring (to which Li paid direct
homage during its centennial year), plus some beloved clichés from the 1895
Tchiakovsky / Petipa Swan Lake including
the famous dance of the four arms-crossed cygnets. “Gó” is dynamite dancemaking, eye-popping and
filled with references that click. I was mystified, though, when “Gó Redux” ended
with a trick seemingly lifted from the Hubbard Street Dance vocabulary – empty dresses
traveling across the stage (here, on a clothesline). We’ve seen variations on this theme in Jirí Kylian’s
signature piece, “Petite Mort,” and in other works staged by Hubbard in the
early 2000s. Knowing Li, the reference probably
was intentional, but it felt like an afterthought – a non-sequitur among the brighter
puns in this piece.
The pièce de resistance in Armature was the world premiere of the title work, “in
media res.” For sheer physiopsychological
challenge it bore relation to Elizabeth Streb’s “Board” – a dance featuring a
soloist, a mat, and game of chicken with a spinning two-by-four that I’ve seen
Li perform twice. “In media res” is a
strong, resonant piece, threaded with spoken words in nonsensical sequences
that evoked its title or its actions. It
featured a fearless Li at the peak of tensegrity, performing impossible feats
with a small, plain work table; she lifted it on her shoulders like Charles
Atlas, slid beneath it and hung off its edge, went from downward dog to
headstand on its top,
promenaded there in low arabesque, slid backwards to hang
off its edge, teetering on the small of her back, then fired up her core to
spring up – a Pilates teaser – before leaping to her feet on the tabletop and jumping
down, to vanish and re-emerge, mysteriously, framed in a string of
lights.
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| Li, "in media res" © Craig Schreiner |
Brava.
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