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James Canfield, Oregon Ballet Theater's artistic director, probably likes Howard Schatz's ballet photographs a lot better than Lois Greenfield's athletic dance pictures. It's not really fair to say that Jamey Hampton and Ashley Roland, the founders of Bodyvox, Portland's newest dance company, prefer Greenfield's work, since they are sometimes the subjects. Schatz and Greenfield are concurrently showing in Portland, as Bodyvox debuts with The Big Room this weekend and Oregon Ballet Theater closes its season with the annual American Choreographers Showcase, which runs through June. This collusion of events should provoke some dialogues about dancers as human athletes vs. dancers as supernatural purveyors of grace and beauty. Since 1992, Schatz has been shooting dancers underwater, in an indoor pool. The results are his book, WaterDance, and a gallery show. His typical subjects are bone-thin, auburn-haired ballerinas (mostly from the San Francisco Ballet Company) suspended underwater in gorgeous still poses. They appear to be either mermaids, corpses or embryos. Canfield's approach to the '97/'98 Oregon Ballet Theater season embraces a similar aesthetic. His ballerinas are so stunningly dressed and coiffed that movement becomes secondary to the virtual fashion show. In its attempts to marry modern sexuality with classical form, OBT tends to either fail miserably or strike gold. Passages, which was choreographed by a group of OBT dancers and opens the showcase, could be the beginning montage of a Woody Allen movie. Skipping to a symphonic version of a Metallica song, nubile girls in simple white dresses appear as post-collegiate urbanites, wistfully applying for entry-level jobs at a publishing house and cheerfully partying at night. The dancing is delicately difficult, breezy and loving. Along with Trent McIntyre's piece in this spring's production, Moving Signatures, Passages will be remembered as a highlight of OBT's season. Dance Card immediately follows Passages in the American Choreographers program. It seems equally promising but belly-flops into cement. Directed by Nashville screenwriter Joan Tewkesbury and choreographed by Canfield, the hardboiled sketch provoked only two thoughts: Ballerina Patricia Miller should seriously consider going into acting, and younger dancer Katarina Svetlova should think about becoming Liv Tyler's body double. Sex gets even raunchier here than in Canfield's Easter opus, Revenge Poems (there's even some spanking!). Rating at least a PG-13, the strong chemistry among the dancers and plenty of breast stroking are convincingly erotic and choreographed well. Between these surprisingly believable trysts there's just a lot of female bickering; you're not sure whether to laugh or burn a bra when a mother-daughter-grandmother fight is set to a soundtrack of hissing cats. Lois Greenfield, who has been shooting dancers since the early '70s and is frequently published in periodicals from The New York Times to Vogue, might be dismayed by Dance Card's lack of movement and weak portraiture of female sexuality. Greenfield's subjects are athletic to the point of being alien. Often a single frame can't contain their energy, so limbs or hair are cut out of the photo. Bodyvox dancers have a similarly difficult time restricting their bodies to the confines of a stage. Artistic directors, choreographers and dancers Roland and Hampton--who have both won Emmys and choreographed videos for Sting, U2 and Soundgarden--recently decided on Portland as home base for their latest venture. The median age of Bodyvox dancers is 35, and several members are ex-OBT dancers. Maturity may stiffen the limbs, but it enhances personality, confidence and stage presence. Bodyvox dancers attack movement organically and actually appear to be having a lot of fun. Most are muscular and healthy-looking, creating a sense of mass with their aggressive motions. The Big Room, the program they'll première this weekend, ranges from stripped-down to flamboyant. Athletic tumbles and a huge sense of physical community are set to music by Aphex Twin, Frank Zappa and Bill Frisell. Members of both Bodyvox and the Oregon Ballet Theater encourage seeing all four shows. Each treats dance as a wondrous form, but together they debate the merits of earthly athleticism vs. platonic artistry. |
