Iceland Dance Company review

The renowned European company made its New York debut rather unceremoniously at the Brooklyn Center Saturday evening. Iceland Dance Company’s first American tour features a triple-bill of pieces from the company’s repertoire including works by Peter Anderson, Ólöf Ingólfsdóttir and Stijn Celis.

Critic’s Choice? choreographed by company member Peter Anderson explores the relationship between the artist and the critic. The piece is set up by a verbal introduction by Lovisa Osk Gunnarsdottir acting as a facilitator for an ongoing discussion with the choreographer during the piece. It is explained that due to ‘personal commitments’ Anderson cannot attend in person but will be broadcast via the Internet onto a huge screen on the left of the stage.

As the work itself is just beginning Gunnarsdottir calls a halt to the piece to ask Anderson about the ‘high value of art.’ Before this discussion can get underway however Anderson is called away from the videoconference by his young daughter who seems to have a stomach virus. The dance continues into very conventional swing style duets to the soul music of Otis Redding.

After a few minutes Anderson returns and the work is again halted to make way for an analysis of the artistic choices. Before Gunnarsdottir can get a straight answer from Anderson he is again called away to tend his sick daughter. Still performing in pairs, the dancers begin using weight-sharing partnering techniques from contact improvisation.

In a final effort to “have a serious analysis of the work” Gunnarsdottir chides Anderson for creating conventional dance that entertains an “MTV generation.” Incensed, Anderson says that he doesn’t have time for this and ends the videoconference to tend his sick child. Gunnarsdottir is left on stage ranting that choreographers should put creating meaningful and important art above personal issues.

Of course the whole setup is staged. Anderson performs in the next two pieces, live and without a sick child. The pretense however is very purposeful and the almost absurdity of the situation sheds light on the delicate issues of critical analysis of art. Critics are required to scrutinize works for which they have no context and no back-story while artists struggle to create from their personal experiences without allowing them to overshadow the work. While not memorable for its choreography, Critic’s Choice? is a masterfully complex work of art.

In the company’s second piece, Man is Always Alone, Ólöf Ingólfsdóttir strives to create an un-piece, a dance without gender, conflict or concept. The movement presents variations by each dancer on a short solo consisting of angular arm movements and quick leaping turns. Without concept or conflict the pure movement of the dance wears thin towards the middle but is redeemed by exquisite and powerful technique on the part of the dancers.

Stijn Celis’ enigmatic work Practice Paradise is a concept work following a homogenous group evolving into a new state. Celis describes the piece as a “wild and wacky creation…about the quest of people wanting to make their life better.” Wacky is perhaps an understatement.

Celis, who also designed the costumes and scenery, opens his piece with a uniform cast dressed in loose black trench coats, black toboggan hats and thick black mustaches. The effect creates a sexless, classless, individual-free society, but also a rather bland picture. These comic, Charlie Chaplinisque beings perform disjointed solos, slipping between frantic gesturing and exaggerated pantomime.

To upset this equilibrium, an evolved character in a shockingly red tulle gown arrives on the scene. This burly figure stuffed into the dress bears the same Groucho style mustache but replaces the black toboggan with a Can-Can dancer head-piece. The new figure leaps about the stage in a much freer and lyrical movement until he is noticed by one of his former compatriots. The un-liberated dancer seems to admire and envy the newcomer until he is presented with his own red gown.

The transformation of the other characters consumes the rest of the dance until only one is left without a tulle gown. Even though sporting a two-foot feather in its head-piece the others don’t accept this half transformed being until it too discovers a gown. The piece closes with its opening image, only in the new costumes, prompting the choreographer’s question “do they reach their goal?”

Despite the company’s strong performance the audience response was only lack-luster. With its emphasis on emerging European choreographers, the company is a much-needed influence to the New York dance scene; one hopes that other venues will follow the Brooklyn Center’s lead in programing companies of this caliber.