Promises of theatrical chutzpah beckon dance lovers

By Jennifer Noyer

“Chutzpah: A Dancical”

“Chutzpah: A Dancical”

“A dead grandmother, a stack of old letters and a batch of cookies…” forms the story of “Chutzpah: A Dancical” by the Blythe Eden Dance Company that will appear November 6, 7 and 8 at North Fourth Arts Center. This story is told through text, singing, film and dance.

Eden has created this show as a trip taken by a granddaughter carrying the ashes of her grandmother, yet the emphasis is on zany entertainment. The choreographer works in a style of modern dance, with a folk-rooted base that reflects her training in the Martha Graham technique, yet with a unique dance vocabulary.

Live music and film form the other two sides of this triple form, each chosen for stylistic reasons. The Zoltan Orkestar, whose founder Zoltan Szekely was born in Romania and raised in Hungary, uses a blend of nomadic rhythms from Eastern Europe to South America, with a gypsy quality. The musicians on stage perform as part of the group telling the story.

Eden says she uses film here to provide texture. Erin Hudson is a New Mexico-based filmmaker who produces and edits her work through her studio Rotation Films. The film deepens the structure of the whole work, allowing the audience to see beyond the stage into the thoughts and atmospheres of the characters.

“The Body Artist”

The Body Artist

Zsolt Palcza’s “The Body Artist” is a theatrical piece in which the theatrical environment frames the dance. An earlier work, “Pure,” was set in a box with watery themes in film washing over the walls. “Body Artist” will be seen in a black space lit in such a way that the walls seem to disappear and the action takes place in an infinite universe: the conflict between the two dancers becomes a universal one. Palcza is most interested in communicating through raw emotions the physical body in action.

His dance style focuses primarily on a physical vocabulary, with roots in many different dance techniques. The lifts and jumps come from studies in ballet, but he teaches his dancers to land and fall with techniques learned in judo and martial arts class. His style works to create a pure state of dance that is violent, sensual, athletic and exhausting. A complicated jump/catch/land sequence is like a puzzle for him—a little bit of engineering. Palcza earned Master’s degrees in engineering and in theater/dance, so he is intrigued by the mechanics of the dance.

The soundtrack for “Body Artist” is based primarily on work by Hungarian composer Peter Eötvös.

Opens Friday, Nov. 27 at 8 p.m.
Runs November 28 and December 4–5 at 8 p.m.

“The Body Artist” will  presented at the:
Readymade Dance Theater Studio
4013 Silver SE, Albuquerque NM 87018
505-980-5273

A “Nutcracker” for everyone

Nutcracker on the Rocks

For a complete contrast in dance styles, take a break for the Christmas season and enjoy 19^th century classicism in one of the many versions  of the “Nutcracker” ballets in town.

New Mexico Ballet Company
Opens November 28th runs through December 6th at Popejoy Center for the Arts .
Keshet Dance Company’s “Nutcracker on the Rocks”
runs November 30 through December 2nd at the National Hispanic Cultural Center
and Ballet Theatre New Mexico’s “Nutcracker”
Opens December 12 runs through 24 at the the KiMo Theater .

—Jennifer Noyer is a contributing editor to albuquerqueARTS.