Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival

Black Grace has performed at Jacobs Pillow Dance Festival situated in the Berkshire Mountains, Massachusetts in August 2004. Following is the New York Times review of Black Grace's show at "the Pillow".

Jacob's Pillow is an internationally celebrated centre for dance that presents some of the best dance companies in the world at its annual Festival; supports the creation of new work through commissions and residencies; engages the public through free performances, exhibits, lectures and talks with artists and scholars; educates professional dancers at its school under the guidance of an international faculty; trains interns in arts administration and technical theatre; and preserves dance legacies through documentation and an extensive historical Archive.

NEW YORK TIMES August 16, 2004
"New Zealand Company Breaks Out and Soars"
By Jennifer Dunning Beckett

Mass., Aug. 13 - Black Grace's American debut season at the Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival here in the Berkshires was preceded by unusually excited word of mouth. The festival had to add a matinee on Friday to meet the demand for tickets. And this modern-dance company from New Zealand exceeded expectations in dance that was startlingly fresh and full of invention, humor and infectious exuberance.

Black Grace is an all-male ensemble of six dancers of Pacific Island and Maori descent. The dances are inspired in part by indigenous dance from that part of the world and by the men's compact, solidly built physiques. Western modern dance and martial arts have been woven into the mix, with oddly eloquent little gestures poking through. Black Grace works with a somewhat circumscribed vocabulary, communicating a surprising amount through shifting ranks of dancers, and through bounding, bouncing motion, sudden falls and rises and leaps that have the artless beauty of fish breaking from the water and soaring into the sky. One of the most interesting aspects of the wide-ranging program was the extraordinarily close relationship the dancers established almost immediately with the audience, which seemed largely made up of vacationers of all ages. The dancers' simplicity and lack of assumption was in part responsible, even more than the athletic push of what they performed.

You don't need to read the program notes to feel the push of the sea in "Deep Far," a quartet (Tai Royal, Sam Fuataga, Sean MacDonald and Daniel Cooper) danced to propulsive music by Afro Celt Sound System. Described as a dance inspired by New Zealand droughts and based on the cyclic nature of weather patterns, "Deep Far" has the momentum and soft push of waves flowing ceaselessly in and out.

In "Human Language,'' set to music by Chico Hamilton, the guys (Mr. Royal, Tamihana Paurini, Mr. Fuataga, Mr.MacDonald, Mr. Cooper and Jeremy Poi) are doing their dance thing in the typically darkish stage space when suddenly a young woman enters, followed eventually by the program's other two female guest artists (Abby Crowther, Dolina Wehipeihana and Desiree Westerlund), all dressed in tangy-colored chiffon party dresses. Standing in a row, their hands to their mouths, the men begin to blow up colored balloons that fly out in a fizzle, just as appropriately, when the women leave. The theme is reiterated in a dance that could use a little tightening but unassumingly accomplishes a rare genuine sexual equality among the dancers.

"Fa'a Ulutao," the program's opening dance, introduces the Black Grace style. "Minoi," danced to a traditional Samoan song and the sounds of the men slapping their bodies in a Samoan traditional dance form, suggests the physical complexities that are possible within that style. The joyously soaring "Method," set to Bach, is the style's grand affirmation. "Objects" suggests the emotional complexities of which the choreographer is capable.

Inspired by two haunting poems by Teresia Teaiwa and Sia Figiel, one of them read as part of an accompaniment that included music by Hirini Melbourne, "Objects" is one of the most haunting evocations of cultural displacement that I have ever seen. There were moments in the program that brought fleetingly to mind the choreography of Paul Taylor and Mark Morris. One solo in "Objects" recalled the bleak anomie of Mr. Taylor's solo in George Balanchine's "Episodes." But the look is not at all similar. And that, perhaps, is its greatest gift. The choreographer has spread his artistic roots in several rich pasts and grown up and out into a sunlight of his own making.