The dancers of Smuin Contemporary Ballet after “Tutto Eccetto il Lavandino” at the Joyce
Last week, the San Francisco-based Smuin Contemporary Ballet returned to the Joyce after an absence of 12 years. Under Celia Fushile, the director whose seventeen-year tenure ends this season, the company has preserved the extroverted, open-hearted style for which it is known, inherited from the works of its founder, the choreographer Michael Smuin. The dancers are engaging and appealingly diverse as well as tireless—most of them performed in all three works shown at the Joyce. And the pieces they brought were, for the most part, packed with muscular, athletic movement. But it is hard not to feel that the company’s energies were somewhat wasted on repertory that ranged from the brightly unsubtle (Val Caniparoli’s 2014 “Tutto Eccetto il Lavandino”) to the tiresomely arch (Annabelle Lopez Ochoa’s “Tupelo Tornado, from 2024). The exception, and it is a hopeful one, was the piece in the middle, Amy Seiwert’s “Renaissance.” I say hopeful, because Seiwert is the company’s incoming artistic director; she may be able to do something about what, at least on this visit, appears to be a problematic repertory.
In her “Renaissance,” performed to the vocal polyphonies of the Kitka Women’s Vocal Ensemble, Seiwert creates a communitarian vibe in which the dancers appear connected by both physical and psychic bonds. The dancers link together in formations in which they become part of something larger than themselves, moving almost as a single organism with many moving parts. The images in the dance, like the music’s mysterious and archaic-sounding harmonies, are often religious or ceremonial. The songs, unlisted in the program, come from the folk traditions of the Balkans and Eastern Europe. It would be interesting to know more about them. One wonders whether, as when a woman dressed in black is carried through the air like a spirit—much like the woman in George Balanchine’s “The Unanswered Question”—this haunting image echoes something in the words. “Renaissance” is suggestive, but one suspects it could go further, explore its themes with greater specificity and intensity.
“Tutto Eccetto il Lavandino,” whose jokey title means “everything but the kitchen sink”—and yes, a sink is tossed onto the stage at the end—is one of those pieces that try to infuse the vocabulary of ballet with American playfulness and spunk. But what works in Twyla Tharp’s “Brahms-Haydn Variations” looks superficial and un-funny here. Tendus, balletic port de bras, and turns are spliced with undulations, running lunges, turned-in legs, and moments in which the dancers “rock out” out to an unsubtle, overly loud recording of generic Vivaldi string works. The humor is often forced, as when a series of men open their mouths as if to scream, and then begin to sob uncontrollably.
After Amy Seiwert’s “Renaissance”
Ochoa’s “Tupelo Tornado” is worse. An attempt to deconstruct the Elvis myth, it combines a dancer (Brandon Alexander) in the role of Elvis, forced to lip-sync Elvis songs with his head contained in a TV-like box, with bits of voiceover (like talking heads in a documentary), and mostly unison dancing that would look more at home in a Fosse musical or an aerobics class than an exploration of Elvis. Forget Elvis’s gyrations or the vernacular moves of rock and roll. To add to the randomness of the staging, for some reason the dancers wear long blue gloves. A bobble-headed Elvis doll plays a far-too-important role in the choreography. The dancers don Elvis masks and crowns (remember! Elvis was the King! Wink wink!). The topics touched upon include Elvis’s outsized sex appeal, his appropriations of black music, his love of gospel, and his dependance on drugs. Meanwhile we hear bits and pieces of his songs. None of this gets more interesting as it goes along.
The program is a disappointment; it makes you wonder what the dancers would do given better material. Perhaps on its next visit, the company will bring more works like “Renaissance.” From what we saw here, the dancers deserve better.
After Annabelle Lopez Ochoa’s “Tupelo Tornado”