Still Birth Debut | 1992

Photo: Jackie Fugére

Trocadero Theater

Philadelphia Inquirer
1992
by Miriam Seidel

The Trocadero, one-time burlesque theater, later a Chinese movie house, and now an industrial-dance night club, hosted is first-ever modern dance concert Tuesday night. Archetype Dance Company’s premiere performance, “Still Birth Debut”, bowed before a young crowd of Troc regulars who took to the dance floor themselves after the last piece was over.

The choice of venue was part of a strategy devised by artistic director, Brian Sanders, 25, to reach out directly to an audience of his own generation.

The evening’s work was introduced by Milton Myers, Sanders’ teacher at the University of the Arts, who danced with the late Alvin Ailey and is currently resident choreographer with Philadanco. Sanders and the entire company of 13 dancers are students at the University of the Arts’ many have performed with Group Motion and other dance troupes.

The entire program was choreographed by Sanders. Birth was the theme of the first two works performed on the six-dance program. Placental Web featured Sanders attached by an umbilical plastic cord to one female dancer, and engaging actively with another dancer. A generic quality to the themes and emotions of the earliest piece was mitigated by the rough-and-tumble energy of the dancers’ encounter.

A similar mixture of overwrought emotion and no-holds-barred, almost violent movement characterized two other works, Aged, a trio with two men and a woman, and Nascence – a recently choreographed piece that revealed Sanders’ growing confidence and ability to work with a large group of dancers. The dancers entered one-by-one onto the Troc’s original stage in slow somersaults and rolls, their forms abstracted by backlighting. Finally, gathered on the dance floor in front of the stage, they stretched and reached collectively, then climbed back onto the stage. Nascence was a simple, effective dance, incorporating a nice use of the space.

The final and most ambitious piece, Lest Thou Merge, verged on theater, with a woman in priest’s vestments delivering a haranguing sermon, and an improvised, operative line performed onstage by singer Beth Schumacher. Behind these figures, several pairs of dancers in business suits jumped, ran, climbed, and folded their bodies into each other.

This and all the night’s pieces were backed by an eclectic mix of recorded music, all with thundering, bass lines that vibrated the floor.

The night’s show-stopper was the off-the-wall Homage, featuring music by Talking Heads, three women in Isadora Duncan-like togas, and three women in drag as bearded and robed Hasidic dancers. In Lest Thou Merge and Homage, Sanders shows himself to be at ease deploying heavy archetypal images – suits, togas, robes – with energy and wit.

Despite the dark “Still Birth Debut’ title of the evening’s program, the birth of this young company appears to be a healthy one.