I've seen "Water Music" in several configurations. I've called its corps everything from "a leaping throng" to "lacking energy" -- though this time it was neither. The white-robed ensemble (KC2 plus rising young Kanopy star Yoshie Fujimoto Kateada) looked angelic, spinning two-foot turns, arms upstretched like wings to heaven. Frequent Kanopy collaborator Kiro Kopulos, who's stolen this show before, appeared in their midst, wearing red pants and smiling faintly like a visitor from a different dimension. The corps bore him overhead, supine like a sacrifice, then set him on his feet. Around him, they danced ring-around-the-rosy. He smiled, almost laughed, then was suddenly left alone onstage, arms outstretched, grinning as the lights went down.
Thurrell's "Miserere" was set for this performance on an ensemble of 14 dancers drawn from both companies plus four soloists, including guest Allen Gregory from Ballet Minnesota. Thurrell went for Baroque aesthetics in this piece, inspired by a visit to St. Peter's Basilica in Rome, and she succeeded.
Dancers in flowing flesh-toned garments were bathed in golden, Caravaggio light. Crowds of human figures filled this canvas with contorted, contraction-based contrapposto. The movement was threaded through with religious narratives. Pairs crossed the floor, one draped as if dead over the other's shoulder. Gregory stood on his shoulders, arms stretched wide on the floor like an inverted Christ on the cross. In a pas de deux, Fujimoto Kateada and Kanopy principal Juan Carlos Velez ran, lept, fell and carried each other in angular lifts -- in one, she lay on his back as he hoisted her in Pietá position.
Cleary's "End Times...Ebullient Machine" pits redemption against chaos, a Biblical theme to be sure, but the doomsday leitmotif in this dance is pliant. Its 2005 premiere, at the height of the Iraq war, looked like protest -- the dancers, like bomb victims, wore blood- spattered blue dresses. In its latest, newly-costumed incarnation, "End Times" took on tones of Wall Street greed or bread line panic. Redemption (a pastel-clad trio) and Chaos (in black, with war paint and wild hair) were woven together in crazy patterns.
Most striking about Friday's performance was the company's overall maturity. These restored repertory works packed new punch. The dancing was uneven, as usual, but the glitches were veiled in the large ensemble approach. And KC2 didn't water down the program -- far from it. Young dancers carrying off modern idioms with aplomb bodes very well for the future of dance.
