Having fun with all of it collectively: Alive Dance Collective’s ‘SHIFT’

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Variety is the spice of life, they say. These programs demonstrate that such a bounty can delight the creative palette with many different flavors to savor. The Boston-based group is certainly part of the city’s bounty of smaller-scale, yet stalwart dance companies – continuing to add their own sugar and spice with each new program.

The memorable up stream, from Alexandria Nunweiler in collaboration with the dancers, opened the program. Nocturnal crickets and ethereal choral singing in the score (“Choir and Crickets” by David Russo) filled the space. Dancers moved low to the ground, rolling in independent timing, then found unison gesture as they rose. In the quiet of mystical night, something gelled. Concentric rotating circles enhanced that sense of cohesion emerging. Spines were fluid and serpentine as they changed relationship with levels in space and with each other.

A shift in energy came with a score change; their timing quickened to match the music (“Aqueous Transmission” by Incubus). A decrescendo came after the crescendo, however, and soon they again moved slow and easy. That cohesion found, they together moved through this cycle of rising and falling energy. up stream exemplified work that’s simply viscerally evocative, certainly plenty to delight and intrigue.

Twilight People, danced and choreographed by Shira Weiss: a solo seemingly with deep significance, yet also abstraction making it available to varied meanings. Weiss, seated on a plain bench, repeated a gesture while voices in the score rose strong and clear. As an approach used throughout the work, with varied movement vocabulary at different points, the repetition became almost meditative.

Before long, movement grew in size, power and the shapes layered within it. Weiss read from a prayer shawl and then donned it over their shoulders, swaying spine laterally as the tassels rippled. They returned to the bench at the end. In its devotional, soothingly meditative quality, it was a refreshingly unique work.

Audrey Hatas’ Murmuration continued the sweet and soothing offerings, with a touch of implied history and tradition. The dancers came off quasi balletic, in skirts and with movements reminiscing the classical – yet were also barefoot and free in their own qualities: spines easy rather than fully lifted, feet softly expressed rather than “cashew”-pointed.

Timing and staging brought similar qualities: intentionally shaped, yet not forced. The life already inside the clay of the dancers was revealed, as Michelangelo might muse. In the softening of the classical and the organic, soulful feel at hand, the work reflected something of Isadora Duncan’s work and ethos.

The next work, Roll, Flip, Toss, Jam by Katrina Conte in collaboration with the dancers, brought us into the delightfully zany. The duet partners, Brenna Banister and Katherine Berman, dance-partied it out while mixing in some conventionally contemporary footwork for good measure. Keen kinetic shaping evolved as a jazzy voice rose in the score: opposite facings, canon timing, movement vocabulary shuffled and reassembled. There was fun, but also rigor. And so it is with art-making; we find the balance between the two – and, ultimately, the final product of our work.

Lila Ruth Klaus’ Rage/Release came next, offering softness but also vitality and tenacity. Ensemble members accumulated into the space with their own movement, joining the growing shape of posed bodies. Movement built: dancers coming in and out of unison, rising tall and then finding the floor, gesturing towards and away from one another.

Kinetic ease filled the stage, yet – undergirded by a repeated harmony in the score (“The King” by Anjimile) – agitation resonated through the space. Even so, even with their speed escalating in accordance with the score and in the face of that sonic turbulence, they embodied ease. The ensemble ended with a unison clap, arms up high. They would stand strong in being the calm amidst an environment trying to strip them of it.

With soft acoustic and a wistful voice in the score, movement a bit more ethereally balletic, the atmosphere was softer with Paige Befeler’s Wildflower – coming just after intermission. But there was also a pathos: spines releasing back and then whipping forward with a change in direction, steps forward and back evoking uncertainty, gaze clear and emotive. At the same, the group’s cohesion was clear. Whatever they were facing, together or individually, they were in no way alone – and that felt just as meaningful.

Alexandria Nunweiler’s Subtly Alice, a dance film, ushered in a bit more intriguing abstraction. Montage video interweaved exploration of light and shadow with movement: gesture, larger body shapes, simple gaze with moments of stillness. A mysterious and chilling string chord enhanced the mystery in the ether, enigma filling all senses (score from Agnes Obel).

Accented gesture, repeated over and over, complemented ambient tension. Hands sliding down a wall evinced a searching amidst the tension and abstraction – perhaps finding grounding and understanding when it seemed otherwise in short supply. To end, the camera looked down on a spiraling staircase, a dancer rising from their seat – perhaps seeking such resolution for themselves.

1519, 1216, choreographed and danced by Katherine Berman, kept alive and well the uncertainty of the prior piece – yet also added something more somber and soulful. On knees, Berman gestured: reaching, searching, integrated and commanding in her movement. Rising, she brought that search farther out into space. Arms folding reminisced prayer: a devotional quality to her search. Finally she rested, seated and looking forward. Rest is, after all, essential for that seeking to continue.

Even more of that somber soulfulness came with the next ensemble piece, Marina Villeneuve’s Reflecting Light; longing in the movement quality met the singer’s crooning in the score (“Reflecting Light” from Sam Phillips). That imbued something nostalgic, dreamy in memory. Nostalgia can feel best in community, which the dancers created through unified movement and a sense of unspoken connection.

The multifaceted Aleph? Bet., from Brenna Banister in collaboration with the dancers, closed the program. Appropriately enough, it brought in many qualities, themes and approaches of preceding works. Repeated movement presented something meditative. Speech in the score offered character and humor, which the dancers skillfully made visceral through pantomime and theatricality. Their gestures smoothly met the timing of speech and chimes in the soundscape (“The Linguist” by Ben Cuba).

It was all abstract enough that I wasn’t quite sure what exactly was occurring – apart from a vague sense of an elder guiding, and sometimes scolding those in their care, as well as a general feeling of playfulness. Yet I was delighted nonetheless, whatever exactly might have been playing out before us.

What was crystal clear, however, was a sense of individual personality for each persona simultaneous with group unity. Those are the best times with friends: when all feel part of a collective, yet also free to be them. That playfulness, joy, and connection was a lovely note on which to end.

Whatever the approach, whatever the atmosphere, whatever the “vibe”, it can be great if we’re in it together. Thank you and congratulations to Alive Dance Collective for presenting many flavors to enjoy, and do so in unified community: essential, yet too often lacking.

By Kathryn Boland of Dance Informa.

Agnes Obel, Alexandria Nunweiler, Alive Dance Collective, Audrey Hatas, Brenna Banister, Choreographer, choreographers, choreography, dance film, dance films, dance review, dance reviews, David Russo, Isadora Duncan, Katherine Berman, Katrina Conte, Lila Ruth Klaus, Marina Villeneuve, Mass Motion Dance Studios, online dance review, online dance reviews, Paige Befeler, review, Reviews, Sam Phillips