Aldridge and Prescott- overundersidewaysdown
Company personality
Ballet X is on fire at the Wilma Theatre with their summer concert series. The concert was bursting with dramatic stage pictures, sumptuous dance and electric chemistry. The opening work, Jorma Elo’s Scenes View 2’s text of stage directions sets up a ‘contact improv’ feel of dancers in movement fragments that get more fevered. Bach’s Partita No. 2 for Solo Violin to the rescue and Elo finally uncorks his choreographic stream. Elo’s choreography can look decorated, but these dancers have the muscle to attack choreographic extravagances with suppleness and simmering theatricality.
Matthew Neenan’s ‘Broke Apart,’ set to a mix of songs begins with a duet between Amy Aldridge and Matthew Prescott whose eyes are locked and bodies moving around a sectional barre formed in a box which they bust through in various ways. That theme of bodies over under sideways down captures Neenan’s sense of movement humor, drama and mystery. The highlight was Cindi Lauper’s vainglorious version of ’Le Vie en Rose’ that underscores one of Neenan’s finest trio passages danced with shimmering clarity by Laura Feig, Amy Aldridge and Jermel Johnson.
Jodie Gates ’Le Baiser Inevitable’ has a Cirque feel with its total eclipse light ring with the men in rust- olored black banded pants and the women in red bikinis with black sheer shrugs. Dancers cluster in a Fossesque circle as Ravel’s Bolero starts and the dancers looking volcanic. They start to sway and as one by one they pulse out of the circle and bommerrang back in. Bodies snake as Ravel’s oboe gets more and more aggressive. Matthew Prescott has an over the top duet with BX-MVP Tara Keating that skirts close to balletic camp. All part of the fun. Even though the back half was heavily danced, with muddy unison work in key moments, the esprit and sexual subtext had trajectory of its own.
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