James Sewell Ballet
James Sewell’s two new works for his Minneapolis-based James Sewell Ballet demonstrate the broad range of experiences he and his troupe are willing to engage. This season’s torture ballet Turf and the technical romp Proprio represent opposite ends of the spectrum. JSB presented the full-company works at O’Shaughnessy Auditorium in St. Paul, January 19-21, along with the solo Chair Bones by LINES Ballet’s Arturo Fernandez.
Sewell has said Turf was inspired by the wartime strife embedded in Béla Bartók’s 1937 Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta, as well as by Sewell’s research into images of torture from the present (Abu Ghraib) far back into the past. The work opens with the eight-member company on one side of the stage reaching with their arms, lengthening their arabesques and contracting their torsos with liquid, sinuous motion.
But once Brittany Fridenstine crosses over to the other, dark side of the stage, turf wars begin. As the music rumbles, the dancers face off, kick and hit one another. The women’s feet stab like daggers. Sally Rousse is hoisted up and used as a battering ram. Sewell and Rousse are felled, but return in a ghostly duet of tender embraces, curving shapes and free-floating lifts as the rest of the action becomes more disturbing.
On either side of the solemn duo are harrowing portraits of sexual intimidation and physical torture. A sadistic Chris Hannon
pontifically instructs a quivering Emily Tyra to dunk a defiant Penelope Freeh, blindfolded and bound, into a barrel—but only after he
torments Freeh with depraved caresses. At the same time, Fridenstine and her willing helpmate, Nicolas Lincoln, viciously torment their bound and blindfolded victim, Justin Leaf.
After Hannon and Fridenstine engage in sharp, slicing gestures, seemingly discussing their victims’ fates, pandemonium ensues as guards turn against one another. Freeh and Leaf emerge from the fray holding hands, but how much of their characters’ humanity remains intact?
In contrast, Proprio offers a lighthearted study in movement patterns accentuated by fiber-optic lighting filaments embedded in the dancers’ hooded sweatshirts and loose pants. Set to Sewell’s own electronic score, the work begins in the dark as the dancers hold one, then multiple lights that they recombine to create abstract and recognizable images, such as a smiley face.
Eventually, their costumes glow with colored squiggles and stripes that transform the dancers into kinetic light sculptures as they kick, bend, lift and turn in repeating, ever-shifting patterns. While Turf confronts audiences with challenging, controversial imagery, Proprio soothes audiences with its smooth, relaxed feel.
Each of the company women took a turn performing Fernandez’s solo, Chair Bones, this season. Freeh infused its strong, clear, intricate choreography with a quicksilver angularity, animating each small, pointed or large, gracious gesture with vivacious surety.
Camille LeFevre is a dance critic and scholar based in St. Paul, Minnesota.
