vildwerk.: conservation meets dance

El Teatro, El Museo del Barrio, New York City
October 15, 2024

It is a unique project: a marriage between dance, conservation and wildlife experts. Founded two years ago by Chiara Gorodesky as a non-profit organisation, vildwerk. aims to raise awareness of environmental conservation and issues affecting the Earth through the performing arts. For this inaugural programme, seven well-known choreographers presented works inspired by ecological crises including animal extinction and trafficking, butterfly migration and climate change.

It was an evening when the message was more important than the dance, although the latter was largely very pleasing, very watchable. The dancing was right out of the top drawer from first piece to last, although that was perhaps not too surprising given that the cast featured dancers past and present, including several principals and soloists, from the The Royal Ballet, American Ballet Theatre, New York City Ballet, San Francisco Ballet, Martha Graham Dance Company, Buglisi Dance Theater, Complexions Contemporary Ballet and LA Dance Project.

vildwerk.’s first season is dedicated to the #therubyinitiative. Ruby is the only Burmese Roof Headed Turtle in North America, and her species is facing extinction. She was smuggled to the United States from Myanmar via Hong Kong. Abused for 20 years, kept in a dark basement, in a cage too small to turn around or get out of the water, she is a just one-third the normal size she should be at her age.

#therubyinitiative is seeking a mate for her and so establish an colony of hatchlings that may ultimately be rewilded in her natural habitat in Myanmar. The rarity of the species is making the search difficult, but Ruby has an estimated 50 years of viable eggs ahead of her, so there is hope.

Each of the eight works, all ten to twenty minutes in length, addressed a different theme or issue, some more overtly and more successfully than others. From a purely choreographic perspective, two pas de deux and one stunning solo took the honours.

Former Royal Ballet principal Mara Galeazzi choreographed and danced with Jason Kittelberger in Toujours, a work about extinction and loss of species. Loaded with feeling, it hits you in the right way and in all the right places right from the off. The visceral choreography, full of close-quarters partnering, speaks loudly of loss and sorrow. There’s one particularly telling moment when she leaps into her partner’s body, holds on briefly, but then slowly slides to the floor like a species slipping away. Galeazzi and Kittelberger’s understanding was terrific, his support and super partnering allowing her to give full expression to her feelings. Gorgeous.

Commitments elsewhere meant that Christopher Wheeldon was unable to present a planned new work. But what a substitute: his intensely moving This Bitter Earth, set to a haunting remix of Dinah Washington’s soulful song Max Richter’s On the Nature of Daylight. Intimate, emotional and straightforward in manner, it’s out of the same stable as After the Rain. Unity Phelan, who danced with perfect vulnerability, and Preston Chamblee, both from New York City Ballet, imbued it with great beauty and deep emotion.

The evening opened with Joshua Beamish’s Ará, about the migration of species in the rainforest. An ará is a particularly vividly coloured macaw found in South America. After opening with a fine duet by Benjamin Freemantle and Lloyd Knight, they are joined by Luciana Paris, who is held, supported and made to ‘fly’ by the two men. The pleasing flowing choreography made for a fine start.

The only choreographer to present two works, Beamish’s second contribution hit the bull’s eye too. Going back to Ruby, The Golden Turtle is a solo about trafficked and abused turtles. Galeazzi in figure hugging gold bodysuit was the turtle, at first looking for something or someone, before collapsing in a resigned heap, realising perhaps that it’s all in vain and she is the only one left. Wonderfully performed, the choreography even manages to include little moments that hint at turtle-like movements, the head in particular, but without ever being overly literal.

Also before the break came Network by Gianna Reisen, whose Signs was danced in New York City Ballet’s just-finished season, and Monarcas by Henning Rübsam.

Danced by Jonathan Fahoury, Vinicius Silva, Peter Mazurowski and Alyssa Rose Bulin, to David K. Israel’s specially commissioned guitar score, played live, Network is about mycorrhizal fungi, which exist in nearly all soils and provide a secondary root system for plants. Not that you would have got any of that without the programme note. Performed to changing backgrounds of close-up fungi, and finally a sandy desert, it hinted at the effect of climate change and was often quite slow and intense.

The inspiration for Rübsam’s Monarcas, dedicated to butterfly migration, was clear right from the first step, however. The bright, sunny choreography is full of quick footwork and changes of direction, and a lot of cabrioles. That, and the oranges and reds of the costumes of the cast (led by Paris, Fernando Montaño and Eriko Sugimura), left no-one in any doubt as to inspiration. A skittish solo for Paris especially suggested the business and fluttering of butterflies.

Opening the second half, Moss Anthology Variation #5 by Jacqulyn Buglisi and performed by Buglisi Dance Theatre, opened against a projection of tree roots, against which the dancers looked minute, insect-like as they moved among golden, fallen, foliage. Further backdrops provoked different connections but common to all was the smallness of the dancers, humankind, against the might and breadth of the natural world. The end is dramatic. The previous life-filled worlds of the video are replaced by a parched landscape. Then fire and and a definite sense of something lost, even before the performers collapse as if dying.

After This Bitter Earth and The Golden Turtle, the evening rounded off with Briana Reed’s Divinity in Paradox, which aims to highlight climate change, although I didn’t get that at all.

In her wordy programme note, Reed asks whether the great civilisations of the past were destroyed because “their love for the treasures of Divine outweighed respect of that which the Divine has given.” That’s just part of it. Choreographically she presents a divine trinity of Amar Ramasar (Love), Montaño (Faith) and Jacob Rodriguez (Hope), all dressed as if to represent different civilizations; with Erin Gonzales, Gabi Roller, Sugimura and Sydney Williams being divine goddesses representing the peoples from the four corners of the world.

There were some fine moments, not least a super opening solo by Ramasar, dressed as a Greek god. The star of the work was Rodriguez, however. Still a student at New York’s Fiorello H. La Guardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts (the ‘Fame’ school), he showed bags of confidence, pirouetted with great speed and aplomb, and looks one to watch.

I think the idea is that some sort of reproachment is possible, and indeed is attained in an upbeat, party-like ending that sees the women reappear in glittery frocks, and in which everyone was clearly having a good time. But overall it missed the mark, the dance as confused and over-full of ideas as the programme note.

The intent is worthy. No-one is going to argue with the accompanying text that includes the lines, “I’d like to see a kind of world that respects people but that respects the planet as well,” and “The fight isn’t just for the younger generation. The fight is for everyone,” but it just tries to say and do too much.

But it was a fine evening in support of a fine cause. Anything that raises awareness of conservation and ecological issues should be supported and it was good to see an excellent turnout at what is something of an ‘off-the-radar’ venue. Chiara Gorodesky and the artists all deserve a big hand. One hopes that this is just that start, that vildwerk. keeps going, keeps banging the drum.

In addition to the performances, an accompanying photography exhibition by photographers Samantha Bass, Martin Broen and Stephanie Diani narrates Ruby’s journey.

For more information about vildwerk., visit www.vildwerk.org.
#therubyinitiative