2008 Woodie Awards
16th annual North Carolina Dance Festival moves on after UNCG opening
Dance Review
Ali Duffy
Issue date: 10/24/06 Section: Arts & Entertainment
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Comprised of local artists as well as companies and independent artists from around North Carolina, NCDF provides an arena for statewide talent and artistry to be showcased in a professional and academic environment. The festival featured different artists each night, and ran from Oct. 19-21.
Sidelong Dance Company, founded by adjunct faculty member, Karla Finger Coghill, launched the festival with a balletic contemporary piece, "Traveling Backwards Through a Dream," comprised of six dancers all in violet leotards and flowing skirts. Accompanied by solo piano music, the gracefully lifted women floated through precise gestures and mostly running locomotion carrying them on and off the stage. Rather akin to viewing a ballet class, the dancers moved through placement sequences and held a static pleasant sentiment in relating to one another.
Heidi Echols Godfrey constructed a dark duet about tumultuous mother-daughter relationships that I count as my favorite of the weekend. Extremely well rehearsed and developed choreographically, the work focuses on a chair in one corner & a table and chair in another around which the dancers spar and negotiate their relationship. The dancers, representing mother and daughter, skirt around each other, cautiously avoiding confrontation in one moment, only to relish it later. The mother and daughter seem to manipulate each other, and the love/hate that exists between them is palpable. There is a struggle for power as the daughter takes over the mother's chair and movement sequence, commandeering the dominant role. Neither too emotional nor too theatrical, the work was a breath of fresh air, though an intense one.
Primarily flashlights that were passed out to randomly selected audience members lighted the final piece of the evening. These audience members could designate which parts of the stage, if any, to illuminate. An aggressive piece by Sean Sullivan of the North Carolina School of the Arts, it was appropriately titled "Sketches of a Goodbye." Movement qualities in this work bordered on desperate as dancers writhed on the floor to a surging rock song by Incubus as if trying to crawl out of their own skin. Five dancers in white and one in a red dress danced as individuals until a man stood out of the chair he was spinning in to approach the dancer in red. A duet of domination and submission ensued as the dancer in red became entangled in the grip of an abusive (and married) man. Choking gestures became increasingly brutal until the dancer in red escaped and the man was left to wallow in what was left of his life: his guilt and his wife.
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