Spokes and rods articulate with graceful ease, propelling the wheels through space in a thrilling display of torque. Upstage, an assembly line of bodies shifts with methodical, steady precision. The effect is something of a human Rube Goldberg machine: the intricacies of each dancer’s patterns — those standing and in wheelchairs — give way to an elaborate symphony of movement.
“Ghosts in the Machine,” choreographed by Kitty Lunn, director of Infinite Dance Theater, premiered last Friday, June 28th, at The Riverside Theatre in Riverside Church. The company employs a variety of differently-abled performers, aiming to change “perceptions of what a dancer can be.” Lunn, a performer whose back injury forced her into a wheelchair just days before her Broadway debut, is the recipient of an inaugural grant from the CreateNYC Disability Forward Fund, a new initiative from the Department of Cultural Affairs to promote greater inclusion in the performing arts. The mission is finding a long overdue place in the spotlight: earlier this month, Ali Stroker, the first wheelchair-bound actress in Broadway history, cinched the Tony Award for best supporting actress in a musical.
Riding on this momentum, sometimes literally, Lunn’s premiere subverts these boundaries between constraint and freedom. Set against a projected backdrop of turning gears and wheels, and atop Maurice Ravel’s famed “Bolero” with an overlay of mechanical sounds, each dancer’s wheelchair becomes a powering, driving force in the mechanism of movement. Their wheels, effectively, liberate them from the “machine,” as they enjoy a range of fluid, circular motion in contrast to the linear, percussive phrases of the standing bodies.
The evening, in collaboration with Alison Cook Beatty Dance, featured three other works, as well. Cook-Beatty, formerly with the Paul Taylor Dance Company, among others, adapted her own solo, “Touched by Fire,” for herself and Lunn. Each dancer acts as an extension of the other, mirroring movements on varying levels and planes. The contrast between distance and closeness, independence and dependence, ebbs and flows. Guided in and out of the light by Lunn’s care and hands, Cook-Beatty achieves a sort of ethereal ascension, each soul coming to terms with the other. Employing dancers from both companies, the second act opening, “Mahaway: Spring Eternal,” draws upon familiar themes of community and isolation from Igor Stravinsky and Vaslav Nijinsky’s enduring “Rite of Spring.” Grounded in the Mayan folktale of Mahaway, a young skunk who bites off more than she can chew, differences in mobility fade behind Cook-Beatty’s clear, engaging storytelling. The final work, “Pieta,” celebrates the memory of Lunn’s late husband, Andrew Macmillan, who played a crucial role in supporting Lunn’s work and mission. As Lunn escapes the chair and launches into a series of floor phrases, Jim Trainor, the Macmillan figure and live operatic baritone, pushes the chair back into the spotlight. Accepting the offering, she rises onto his shoulders, supported by his figure, yet liberated all the same.
The evening may have explored the limitations and potential of differently-abled bodies, but it also celebrated the different capacities of movement itself — to lose, to find, to comfort, to propel. It is the very spectrum of our different modalities that allows each of us to experience, and tell, the collective story in ever-evolving ways.
Author: Sabrina Rambles
Source: https://sabrinarambles.weebly.com/home/ghosts-in-the-machine?fbclid=IwAR3zRDkYKYhpEo1dce_8pnWKbax2Smysp_VfIvHBeku3Z8W3MWlMkfQDdQc