"Quantum leaps & surprise shifts of effort and flow highlight Lehrer’s work"
05/01/10 20:56
Lehrerdance
Genessee Theatre
Waukegan, IL
9-26-09
Reviewed By
Lynn Colburn Shapiro
Dance Writer and Chicago Correspondent for Dance Magazine
Jon Lehrer showcased his expanding stylistic range and vibrant choreographic palette at Waukegan’s historic Genessee Theatre this past September. LehrerDance, only two years old, already shows a distinctive movement signature and richness of repertory that take most companies years to develop. Lehrer’s smart programming mixed Bach with jazz, athletics with lyricism, and story with the abstract.
In Fused By 8, (2009), the sculpted musicality of Immanuel Naylor’s powerful opening and closing solos, set to Bach’s Brandenburg #3, framed the musically diverse full-company piece, exploring a bound world of curved space ready to explode. Lehrer’s movement entered the music so completely as to become its visual realization. Challenging unseen spatial constraints, tightly-wound, high-force group trajectories embodied Bach’s musical complexity and integrated the urgency of “Black Violin’s” jazz variations. Lehrer grapples with this theme in the breath-taking duet section in which Jennifer Huffman and Joseph Roth defy the limits of body and balance in daring horizontal and off-center vertical lifts. The ensemble’s entrances and exits build a fugue of musical and movement motifs combining on-a-dime transitions from floor to standing to seemingly weightless flight. Quantum leaps and surprise shifts of effort and flow highlight Lehrer’s work .
In Trois, also new this year, Lehrer explores the possibilities and permutations of three partnering dancers in a playful movement anagram. Dancers Roth, Naylor, and Kristen Stein launch into a revelry of body parts, in unison, opposition, and counterpoint, swinging, rocking, balancing, pushing and pulling each other to the cadence of Amiina’s score for guitar, drums, and bells. Their quietly exuberant interplay exemplifies the fluid technique and strong spinal core that anchor Lehrer’s movement impulses.
The eight LehrerDancers’ distinctiveness owes much to their versatility in Lehrer’s fusion of dance forms, which seamlessly melds dare-devil gymnastics into lyrical movement phrases, as in A Ritual Dynamic (2006). They peddle an infectious brand of humor with dramatic flare in Loose Canon (2006) and Bridge and Tunnel (2002). While developing striking clarity of attack in the ensemble, Lehrer maximizes individual strengths in The Way Within (2007), an introspective solo for Merideth Wanat, and Morphic Slip (2009), an other-worldly duet for Jennifer Huffman and the astoundingly acrobatic Theodore Kryzkowski.
Completing this already delightful evening, each dancer burst onstage for a solo riff on the sheer joy of dancing. Their warmth and personalities shone brightly that night, and left both the audience and Genessee Street bathing in their afterglow.
Genessee Theatre
Waukegan, IL
9-26-09
Reviewed By
Lynn Colburn Shapiro
Dance Writer and Chicago Correspondent for Dance Magazine
Jon Lehrer showcased his expanding stylistic range and vibrant choreographic palette at Waukegan’s historic Genessee Theatre this past September. LehrerDance, only two years old, already shows a distinctive movement signature and richness of repertory that take most companies years to develop. Lehrer’s smart programming mixed Bach with jazz, athletics with lyricism, and story with the abstract.
In Fused By 8, (2009), the sculpted musicality of Immanuel Naylor’s powerful opening and closing solos, set to Bach’s Brandenburg #3, framed the musically diverse full-company piece, exploring a bound world of curved space ready to explode. Lehrer’s movement entered the music so completely as to become its visual realization. Challenging unseen spatial constraints, tightly-wound, high-force group trajectories embodied Bach’s musical complexity and integrated the urgency of “Black Violin’s” jazz variations. Lehrer grapples with this theme in the breath-taking duet section in which Jennifer Huffman and Joseph Roth defy the limits of body and balance in daring horizontal and off-center vertical lifts. The ensemble’s entrances and exits build a fugue of musical and movement motifs combining on-a-dime transitions from floor to standing to seemingly weightless flight. Quantum leaps and surprise shifts of effort and flow highlight Lehrer’s work .
In Trois, also new this year, Lehrer explores the possibilities and permutations of three partnering dancers in a playful movement anagram. Dancers Roth, Naylor, and Kristen Stein launch into a revelry of body parts, in unison, opposition, and counterpoint, swinging, rocking, balancing, pushing and pulling each other to the cadence of Amiina’s score for guitar, drums, and bells. Their quietly exuberant interplay exemplifies the fluid technique and strong spinal core that anchor Lehrer’s movement impulses.
The eight LehrerDancers’ distinctiveness owes much to their versatility in Lehrer’s fusion of dance forms, which seamlessly melds dare-devil gymnastics into lyrical movement phrases, as in A Ritual Dynamic (2006). They peddle an infectious brand of humor with dramatic flare in Loose Canon (2006) and Bridge and Tunnel (2002). While developing striking clarity of attack in the ensemble, Lehrer maximizes individual strengths in The Way Within (2007), an introspective solo for Merideth Wanat, and Morphic Slip (2009), an other-worldly duet for Jennifer Huffman and the astoundingly acrobatic Theodore Kryzkowski.
Completing this already delightful evening, each dancer burst onstage for a solo riff on the sheer joy of dancing. Their warmth and personalities shone brightly that night, and left both the audience and Genessee Street bathing in their afterglow.