Photo Credit: Lois Greenfield


MANDANCE PROJECT
April 9, 2008- April 20, 2008
at the
The Joyce Theater
175 Eighth Avenue at 19th Street


MANDANCE PROJECT took the leap from tutus to post-classicism, in two thrilling programs.

Program A featured the premieres of two ballets choreographed by Eliot Feld: Isis in Transit, a solo for Fang-Yi Sheu that traverses a mythic set created by Mimi Lien and Mr. Feld, danced to the ruthless beauty of Steve Reich's 1967 "Violin Phase" and Undergo for Wu-Kang Chen, a solo plus three that searches transformation, danced to the haunting vocalise of Meredith Monk. Also on Program A: the cul-de-sac jam Backchat and the melancholy eroticism of Pursuing Odette.

Program B showcased Wu-Kang Chen and his HORSE collaborators from Taiwan in an evening length work called Velocity, choreographed by the dancers.

Here's what some critics said about the opening night program:

The man behind the "Mandance Project" is Eliot Feld, a beloved, home-grown choreographer who at 65 remains as provocative, as brilliant…as ever. (Robert Johnson, The Star-Ledger)

Mr. Feld's 2006 "Pursuing Odette," to the familiar but potent Mahler Adagietto, …(is) a perceptive, imaginative solo exploring the divergent impulses of classical ballet and modern dance. It was performed with delicate power by Ha-Chi Yu. (Jennifer Dunning, The New York Times)

In recent years, Feld's collaborations with set designer Mimi Lien have produced some phenomenal conceptual works, including "Backchat," which opened the evening. This amazing male trio reverses the usual stage illusion of perspectival depth. Instead the dancers' bodies, smeared against the wall and overlapping in a frozen image that suggests a photograph of a 30-meter dash, seem impossibly compressed into the same spatial plane. Wow. (Robert Johnson, The Star-Ledger)

The best thing about the program was "Isis in Transit," which proved that Graham's psychosexual voyages continue to provide fertile ground for contemporary reworking. The scenery by Mimi Lien sowed the stage with sculptural elements in the manner of Graham's theatrical topography. The music was the swelling minimalism of Steve Reich. The piece's ostensible subject was the Egyptian legend of Isis and Osiris, which details the way that Isis resurrects and reassembles the remains of her assassinated consort long enough to become pregnant by him. Ms. Sheu wended through a Plexiglas thicket of flexible but determinedly upright trunks, spun on a dish pivoting on the ground, then burrowed into a Plexiglas sarcophagus. Finally, for an apotheosis she levitated into something suggesting a hang glider's harness. Wearing the bikini and bandeaux of an Egyptian or Cretan entertainer, Ms. Sheu was as powerfully lithe and emotionally intense as always. (Joel Lobenthal, The New York Sun)