Power, grace, beauty and lots of feeling: Awakening by Nai-Ni Chen Dance Company

Livestream from South Orange Performing Arts Center, New Jersey
April 10, 2021

David Mead

Awakening. It feels like the most apt of titles. We may still be watching online but there is a sense of optimism in the air that comes with the fact that dance, indeed all the performing arts, are about to take their first steps back to performing in front of a live audience.

It helps the mood when you get a programme like this. Nai-Ni Chen Dance Company’s Awakening features two world premieres along with two works created in 2019, the dance interspersed by the company’s founder-choreographer discussing the inspiration behind each with dance critic Robert Johnson.

While none of the works specifically addresses the Asian-American experience and cultural tradition, often themes in Chen’s choreography, each does reflect on the modern world and its issues, speaking eloquently as they do so. Equally importantly, all are a pleasure to watch, with the closing world premiere of Shadow Force extra special.

To music by Max Richter and Somei Satoh, it is a dance of our times, reflection the struggles of individuals and of society not only as a result of the pandemic, but also as being assailed by politics, continued racial issues and violence and more.

That Shadow Force was initially a product of lockdown, created using Zoom before being refined in the studio, is apparent. Each of five dancers are highlighted in their own small space.

They run on the spot before stopping to look back. Trying to escape and remembering what was, perhaps. They dance in turn. There’s lots of reaching up and out, and sinking to the floor. Even in its more fractured or angular moments, the dance feels very organic with nothing unnatural or forced. It always retains a strength and grace (two adjectives that I found myself coming back to throughout the evening).

Isolation and a yearning to connect pervades. All the emotions that we all probably went through at some point this past year are laid bare for all to see. Although socially distanced, each solo links to the next. An aching arabesque from Rio Kakuchi morphs into a folding in of the leg from Evan Matthew Stewart. Later, they all come together in unison seamlessly, breaking apart again just as smoothly. They swap positions but they never meet. There are more beautiful suspensions and turns. One leap by Ethan Gwynn seems to hang forever in the air.

At the heart of the work is an outstanding solo by Stewart that is quite simply one of the best things I have watched online this past twelve months. It has all the ingredients from the first section, but now on his own it feels so much more personal. He is amazingly light on his feet and as he shifts across the floor. ‘Fluid’ barely does it justice. It also comes with much more a sense of loss and pain, written in his face as well as his body. It’s hauntingly beautiful.

A closing section brings everyone back together. The now more dynamic movement suggests a willingness to fight back, to no longer accept the status quo, perhaps. Towards the very end, there’s even a feeling of a battle won, although it ends with a sense that the war continues.

It is possible to be very philosophic about the preceding Luminescence, also a premiere. There are undoubtedly messages in it about the environment, our need to co-exist with nature, its resilience, despite all that humankind does to it, and how it seems continues to move forward almost regardless.

But essentially, Luminescence is an ode to the living world, it’s beauty and grace: gentle, lyrical dance to another gorgeous snippet of Max Richter. Rio Kakuchi and Yuka Notsuka resemble jellyfish drifting in gentle underwater currents. Always with super control and elegance, their bodies fold, bend and twist. Their long skirts, seemingly made from lightweight plastic, billow. The backdrop suggests the sun glinting down through the water, every now and then, its light momentarily causing their leotards to sparkle. Beautiful.

Awakening opens with something a little harder. From overtly reliable sources to frequently dubious social media postings, these days we are overloaded with news. ‘Fake news’ is a subject of much debate. There are questions of bias too. At the heart of the questioning is the never-ending search for truth, Chen’s starting point for the opening work, Truth Bound, developed during a residency in Trier, Germany in 2019 and in which she fuses traditional movement from Chinese opera and martial arts alongside contemporary dance. There’s also very much a sense of bridging time, from past to present, with perhaps a glance to the future too.

Chen herself appears as the seeker, carrying a white lantern and slowly but purposefully laying down a red fabric pathway for Greta Campo and Ethan Gwynn who follow. Their costumes, made from newspapers, seem to carry great weight, while multiple whispers in the soundscape provide an audible illustration of the information overload.

Their movement is at first slow. Strong martial arts postures suggest both battle and determination, as does one very impressive lift, Gwynn hoisting Campo overhead before slowly turning. Freedom in movement, surely a metaphor, only comes when the sheets of newspaper fall away. I can’t help thinking that Campo and Gwynn’s proactive ripping them away is Chen sending a message: the solution may just be in our own hands.

Completing the programme, Introspection, also from 2019, is a look at identity in which four dancers illuminate each other and the space with hand-held flashlights. The fact there is also enough ambient lighting for us to fully see the dancers too, means that the flashlights provide additional layers and perspectives rather than the only one.

To super saxophone music by Jacob Ter Veldhuis and Prism Quartet, the beams illuminate faces and limbs. There are fleeting glimpses of silhouetted hands and limbs on the backdrop, and lingering outlines of heads. Most impressive is the creation of three shadows for one dancer, turning a solo into a quartet.