Dominic Walsh Dance Theatre
Dominic Walsh Dance Theater closed its fifth season at Houston’s Hobby Center for the Performing Arts on May 5 with a salute to Italy. After a 17-year career at Houston Ballet, Walsh set out on his own in 2004 to create a platform for himself and like-minded choreographers. He’s known for giving young choreographers a venue, but this time he opted for the more established Italian renegade, Mauro Bigonzetti. DWDT and New York City Ballet are the only American companies with Bigonzetti works in their repertoires. Walsh contributed a spiffed up older work, Dolcemente, and his new tribute to Italy, I Napoletani.
Bigonzetti’s Pression is rich with a restrained detachment we ordinarily don’t consider Italian. Walsh and Domenico Luciano mesmerize with legs entangled in the austere opening duet. Are they one body or one in the process of becoming two? The tension is palpable as limbs morph into vicious tentacles. At one point, Walsh’s legs nearly choke Luciano in a neck-vice. Erotic and brash, the men play out a battle of limb and will, and eventually divide to become distinct beings.
Enter the women, an icy Dawn Dippel and Amy Cain, who parade across the stage in a deliberate minimal march. Set to contrasting music by Franz Schubert (“Death and the Maiden”) and Helmut Lachenmann (“Pression”), the ballet culminates in a gripping quartet. The dancers’ spare but polished performances match Pression’s economic emotional tone and movement choices.
Walsh’s I Napoletani, pulls out all the stops to capture the essence of Italy’s landscape. The ballet opens with a slide show of quaint haunts in Naples. The first section, “Stabat Mater,” occurs beneath an image of the historic Teatro di San Carlo proscenium. Wearing huge tulle clouds that hide their lower bodies, the dancers cavort under the frame of this opulent theater. Floating torsos set to Giovanni Battista Pergolesi’s haunting music make for an enchanting beginning. From there on, the piece takes a more contemporary turn with playful nods to the ultra-physical culture of Italy, including a “hand-talking” dance, a boy-chases-girl bit and a dance in honor of pizza. Walsh closes the piece himself with an endearing improvisation to “O Sole Mio.” The zesty romp reveals a deep and definite sense of place.
Dolcemente 07 has been tweaked from the original version Walsh did for Houston Ballet in 2001. Clad in tunics, the dancers look as if they stepped off an ancient Greek vase. The formal quality of the dance erodes toward the end, however, when each dancer improvises to a voice-over of personal memory fragments. Unfortunately, the muddled voices are hard to understand. It’s sweet and nicely danced, but it ultimately lands in the “been-done” zone.
Nancy Wozny writes about dance and somatics in Houston, Texas.
