Fall for Dance at City Center was a beautiful and thought proving event that included a diverse line up of dance companies and choreographers. The Friday, October 13th performance included three group pieces that particularly intrigued me: Solo Echo, choreographed by Crystal Pite and performed by Hubbard Street Dance Chicago; Concerto Grosso, choreographed by Helgi Tomasson and performed by San Francisco Ballet; and Matria Etnocentra, choreographed by George Cespedes and performed by Danza Contemporanea de Cuba. I am interested in the function of gender in these three pieces and how the performance order influences how gender is perceived (or ignored) by the audience.
Solo Echo, the first of the three group dances, was a highly moving depiction …show more content…
Though Concerto Grosso was danced by five men in a very classical ballet style, much of the movement quality and some of the choreography felt very feminine and this struck me has highly unusual. Large sections of the dance emphasized petite allegro, smaller more delicate jumps often performed by women in toe shoes. Even the grand allegro sections had this quality of movement. The larger jumps still looked very airy and effortless, bereft of the sort of obvious raw power male dancers usually broadcast. There was additional emphasis on elongated arms and pretty movements, like waltz steps. At one point in the dance, two men on stage completed a slow developpe a la seconde that transitioned into a promenade in arabesque. This movement felt reminiscent of a ballet class both because the dancers were in unison and because a slow display of extension is a step usually reserved for women soloists on the …show more content…
However, in only one instance did two of the dancers in this piece touch each other, and it was for the express purpose of achieving more height on a jump. I wonder what it feels like to be a male dancer and to be offered the opportunity to work on a dance like this. I imagine that it is both challenging and exciting to work on a piece that requires you to move in ways that are different from how you have been trained. Though the dancers performed the choreography exquisitely, the dance felt incomplete without women dancers, likely because I am conditioned to think of classical ballet as a woman-dominated endeavor. Despite the heavy emphasis on the sort of feminine movements discussed above, the piece ended with all five dancers completing a double tour in unison. This is a highly gendered jump, as only men perform it in classical ballet. Overall this choreography displays a highly interesting tension between masculine and feminine elements. When the dancers came onstage to bow, each dancer bowed separately. This is likely because each dancer performed a solo, but I also wonder if the dancers are considered more separate, by both the audience and the choreographer, when they are all of the same gender. This contrasts strongly with Solo Echo’s gendered group