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    • By Lisa G. Bennett
      • Sep 19, 2017
      • 3 min read

    EMAV Review: Ending their 10th season, LVCDT says ‘goodbye’ and also, ‘hello’ to Contemporary West D

    Updated: Oct 13, 2020



    ★★★★★ - Irresistible

    With their “10th Year Anniversary Celebration” the Las Vegas Contemporary Dance Theater came full circle in early September, giving an emotional, final performance on the same stage at West Las Vegas Library where they have given many free concerts for the public through the years, in co-sponsorship with the Las Vegas-Clark County Library District. But the multicultural company, which has a repertoire of over 40 ballets, is not shutting down. Far from it. As founding artistic director Bernard H. Gaddis explained to the audience during a break between dance pieces, it’s time for the company to “think out of the box and continue to grow and evolve.”

    Which means going global--though the company will be headquartered here--and “branching out past Las Vegas” to “obtain new followers” and to make a name for themselves on the national and international stage. Hence the new motto “The end of an era and the beginning of a new one,” and the brand new company name Contemporary West Dance Theatre which becomes official on January 1, 2018.

    The ten performers--Marie-Joe Tabet, Eddie Otero, Abdiel Figueroa, Josie Camp, Adrianna Rosales, Rachel Murray, Avree Walker, Matthew Palfenier, Maria Vicuna-McGovern, and Ashley Gezana--danced their hearts out with such emotional intensity that their last concert under the LVCDT moniker felt especially meaningful.

    Which is apropos since the search for spiritual meaning and connection seems to be a theme in associate artistic director and original company member Tabet’s compelling ballet “Disassociated,” which had its world premiere at the show.


    Set to Kanye West’s gospel tune “Ultralight Beam” and the music of Max Richter, the piece has a futuristic, apocalyptic feel, with a red backdrop and hazy streams of sepulchral lights shining on dancers as West sings “this is a God dream, this is everything.” They move in angular, slow-motion pairings and poses and weave in and out of each other as if trying to connect but not really knowing how. On Friday the piece was at first disjointed with dancers seeming to lose their place, but it slowly began flowing together and built momentum to a powerful conclusion as dancers moved as one organism while reaching and pleading, and then fell abruptly to the floor like dominoes one after the other to dramatic effect. Veteran company member Otero plays a Christ-like figure; he has the amazing ability to embody charismatic archetypes like the spiritual shaman and the sensuous man. And Gezana’s luminous eyes pierce eerily through the haze.

    Gaddis also enjoyed a world premiere with his sophisticated ballet “Stolen Moments,” set to music by Olafur Arnalds, Max Richter, Hans Zimmer, and Alvo Noto. A hypnotic work of art, the piece features three couples who begin with an intimate, repeating gesture as each turns to gently touch their neighbor and so on down the line. The dancing is beautiful yet also athletic with difficult acrobatic lifts expressing the emotional dynamic of couples in various complex pairings coming together, splitting apart, and then back again. Tabet and Walker create a fiery backstory as a couple with a painful relationship which draws us like moths to a flame because it’s a collective experience to which we can reluctantly relate, while Palfenier and Vicuna-McGovern show off their pure lines. Otero does a solitary dance, and there’s a neat bit where a couple moves from one spotlight to the next as they duet across the stage.

    There’s a clarity of feeling to Gaddis’ ballet “Mood Azul,” set to the music of Dave Brubeck and Marc Frank, that brings to mind a cool ocean breeze on a warm summer night. Idealized romanticism with an exuberant mood, the dancing is lyrical, jazzy, and oh-so-delicate. The sound and look is ethereal and airy, with multiple layers of blue including the girls’ long dresses that carve shapes as they float in space. Lighting designer Sandra Fong has a wonderful talent for enhancing the look of the dancers--their creamy skin shimmers and the whites of their eyes glow. And smooth Eddie Otero shines again when the piece takes on a Latin flair and he performs a sensuous salsa with a wink, a sincere laugh, and the flick of a hand.

    “Mood Azul” makes us feel contentment, happiness, and peace. Seems like a great place to leave the legacy of LVCDT.

    #LVCDT #CWDT #Bennett #Dance #Review

    • Dance
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    • Theatre
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    • Dance Review
    • By Lisa G. Bennett
      • Nov 20, 2016
      • 3 min read

    EMAV Review: Tenth Season a charm for LVCDT ★★★★★

    Updated: Oct 13, 2020



    ★★★★★ - Irresistible

    Las Vegas Contemporary Dance Theater is celebrating their Tenth Anniversary this season, and they opened with a sublime fall concert at the Smith Center for the Performing Arts on Veterans Day. By turns mystical, whimsical, and jazzy, the program was a beautifully danced retrospective of seventeen repertoire favorites and the Las Vegas premiere of Founder and Artistic Director Bernard H. Gaddis' aesthetic, neoclassical ballet "Lotus."

    Amazingly, Gaddis didn't think the company would make it to the ten year mark. In an emotional talk with the audience after curtain he related how, after having difficulties, he wanted to give up and retire the non profit company. He lost dancers as a result but others rallied behind him with a renewed dedication and determination to keep the vision alive, while returning artists lend their talents by appearing in the concert as guests.

    The sweeping, dreamlike "Lotus" opened the show, danced by eight company artists and two apprentices. Gaddis, along with composer Alan Chan, was commissioned in 2014 by California's Laguna Arts Festival to create a work inspired by the 1967 oil on canvas "Lotus Land" of Dynaton artist Lee Mullican, which is an abstract, colorful painting suggesting the mythological Greek lotus eaters who ate the tranquilizing flowers to maintain an altered state.

    In revision Gaddis has set the work to Vaughn William's serene "Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis." Gaddis composed textural layers of symbolism for the piece around ideas of spiritual enlightenment through nature as expressed in the cosmic painting, allowing them to develop gradually and blossom much like a lotus flower pushing through water to bloom on the surface.

    In front of a starry backdrop and immersed in shadowy, blue and yellow lighting, dancers wear long, satiny and ruffled dresses in brilliant colors to suggest flower petals, moving the fabric as an extension of their bodies' and also to define the space around them. Movement is soft, swirling, and circular, with gentle chainés, curved arabesques, and flowing arms increasing in urgency as the music swells. Though the piece feels a bit long it is visually stunning and evocatively performed, with nicely matched pairings and a sun/flower goddess central character exquisitely danced by Maria Vicuna McGovern. We not only see a flower blooming but also a society of people living immersed in a narcotized trance.

    Three other emotionally haunting works composed by Gaddis in a spiritual vein were also given. In his own moving solo "Gabriel Sorrow," wind roars ominously through the classical orchestration. In his long white skirt the angelic looking, graceful Gaddis is a man who is clearly grieving a loss. He collapses in a gesture of anguish and reaches pleadingly up toward a symbolic light, and we feel his pain.

    The forceful and cinematic "Fraternus" is about a sinister seeming brotherhood of powerful men. Performed to chanting chorale music and against a blood red backdrop, five men dressed in long black priest robes move in ritualistic circles so quickly and effortlessly it appears they are floating above the floor. They spin and leap zealously using their red lined robes as capes and look like flying, winged gargoyles. And in a disturbing, mesmerizing solo from "Fraternus" the masterful dancer Eddie Otero undulates under a single spotlight in total darkness, writhing and contracting with complete believability as if he's an ancient, tribal shaman on a vision quest.

    Ulysses Dove's seminal work "Vespers" is a contemporary ballet about six proper women and their experiences at church during evening prayer. Set to the percussive sounds of Mikel Rouse's "Quorum," the stark piece features choreography using chairs, danced with abrupt, perfectly timed precision by the company. The stage picture is striking, with performers in black jazz dresses lit luminously against the darkness so that their glowing skin matches the wood of the chairs. They pirouette and jeté in antagonizing duets, dance frenzied solos of spiritual ecstasy, and perform a dramatic seated line of sequential forward bends and head tossing back arches.

    Interspersed throughout were fun jazz numbers like Alvin Ailey's whimsical "Night Creature" set to the music of Duke Ellington and performed joyfully and flirtatiously by the company. "Embraceable You" is a steamy romantic duet sensuously danced by the expressive Gaddis and the elegant Stephanie Powell; "Take Five" features girls and boys in an exuberant dance off set to a rhythm and blues, surf sound; "Ebony Concerto Solo" features the charismatic Matthew Palfenier as a Pierrot type character moving to the dissonant sounds of Igor Stravinsky; "Hot Chocolatta" is a delightful Latin infused piece featuring Nadjana Chandra; "Don't Explain" features a seductive Agnes Roux; the athletic Marie Joe Tabet despairs in "Bang Bang;" a sassy Vanessa Reyes leads "Spanish Harlem" into the soulful, company danced finale "Ebony Suite;" plus other pieces all charming in their own way.

    LVCDT is a fine company of diverse, passionate dancers with plenty of room to bloom.

    #Bennett #LVCDT #Dance #Review

    • Dance
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    • Dance Review
    • Eat More Art Vegas
      • Oct 8, 2016
      • 1 min read

    Las Vegas Contemporary Dance Theater Celebrating 10 Years of Excellence



    The Las Vegas Contemporary Dance Theater celebrates ten years of excellence of their most popular and moving works. This evening of dances will also showcase the world premiere of "LOTUS," Commissioned by the Laguna Arts Festival in 2014 and set to the score of Vaughan Williams. The original score was composed by composer Alan Chan. The Laguna Art Museum, Laguna Beach Live!, and Laguna Dance Festival joined forces to commission a short, original, music-and-dance work inspired by a work of art in the museum’s collection. The inspiring artwork was Lee Mullican's Lotus Land, Oil Painting on Canvas – 1967. Lee Mullican (1919-1998) was a painter and art teacher, and an influential member of the Dynaton Movement. His Abstract style and stitch-like brush marks were inspired by Native American textiles, which he collected. The title (Lotus Land) refers to the lotus-eaters of Greek mythology, who lived in an idyllic world and ate the narcotic lotus.

    The Smith Center

    Friday, November 11, 2016

    TICKET PRICES: $24-$79

    Tickets

    #Dance #LVCDT #SmithCenter #Listing

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