Daniel Gwirtzman Dance Company – Intersections
Daniel Gwirtzman Dance Company in Intersections. Photo by Steven Pisano
Daniel Gwirtzman Dance Company: Intersections
By R. Pikser
This
20th anniversary concert of Daniel Gwirtzman’s was a retrospective
of pieces created between 1999 and 2018. The pieces were extracted from their
original ballets and put together for this hour and a half concert, and were
restaged for presentation in the round in Buttenwieser Hall, the large open
second floor dance space of the 92nd Street Y, with an intricately
painted beamed ceiling hung with chandeliers. The audience was placed on two
rows of seats on all four sides of the space. The result was at once elegant
and intimate.
Christian von Howard and Daniel Gwirtzman in Intersections. Photo by Steven Pisano
The evening’s pieces included unison works and duets, trios and quartets, the smaller group pieces often developing the movements of the unison pieces into inventive lifts, with bodies counterbalancing each other and intertwining, the sculptured shapes appearing to sprout new body parts or to eliminate them. The imagination shown in the lifts provided a stimulating contrast to the similarity of the vocabulary.
The choreography used different levels, from floor to air, and was mostly concerned with cleanness of execution, in which aspect Jason Garcia Ignacio excelled. However, watching both Christian von Howard, one of Mr. Gwirtzman’s original company members, and Simone Stevens, formerly a student of Mr. Gwirtzman, one could see that there exists the possibility of using these same movements to express texture and even emotional subtext. Both of these dancers infused their every movement with an awareness, a sensuality, and a presence in the moment that made each of them riveting in their own way.
Dance, because it depends on the body, partakes of sensuality by its very nature. Sensuality suggests a certain surrender of oneself, implies a certain danger, the danger of losing control. The play of sensuality is the play between that surrender, that possible loss of control, and at what moment one gives in, maybe to lose oneself, or pulls back, once again taking control. It is for that moment we wait with bated breath. It is the moment spoken of by Martha Graham when she likens dancers to an acrobat on a high wire, living at the instant of danger. These two dancers recalled that sensuality to us, and reminded us of why we go to see dance and why it pulls at our souls.
Daniel Gwirtzman Dance Company
Intersections
February 22nd-23rd 2019
Welcome to the World of Dance
February 24th 2019
92nd Street YM-YWHA
92nd Street and Lexington Avenue
New York, NY
Tickets $20
92Y.org/Dance
212 415 5500
