Last Whartscape, but good dance...

This, the last and final Whartscape, had some dance gems this year, beginning Thursday with a piece choreographed by Caroline Marcantoni called Mahasarasvati. The dance featured nine girls including Caroline, Liz Donadio, Sarah Fask, Donna Sellinger, Jordan Kasey, Pilar Diaz, Monica Mirabile, Stefani Levin, and Luhya Mudd Jones.  Its title, Mahasarasvati, means to give homage to Sarasvati, the Vedic goddess of creativity. It was performed to the song “I Zimbra” by the Talking Heads with high-energy. In speaking with Caroline it’s clear her intentions for the dance were well achieved: “My motivations for the piece were to create an intense, large scale, and brief performance.” It was brief, but captivating, as the girls stomped and moved in unison. Whartscape was the perfect place to break out a dance number, especially one with such energy. It was a performance I had been looking forward to from the very start, and it definitely served as a breath of fresh air from some of the more stagnant off-beat acts.

 On Saturday at the Current Space, Dan Deacon asked Teeth Mountain’s Greg St. Pierre to lead a dance during the Dan Deacon Ensemble’s set. It ended up with the entire audience mimicking Greg’s movement, which was a sight to behold.

Effervescent Collective had a shining performance—the only shining performance—Sunday with INEVERYROOM’s opening set. The turn out was pretty good, and E.C. parted the audience like Moses parted the sea at the beginning of the first song “Little Nums”. It was practically seamless in execution as the audience made space and gazed upon the dance in the little pavement plot at the Current Space. In the spirit of Effervescence, Whartscape made way for a lot of mass sweaty movement. The dance was a structured improvisation, but that wasn’t apparent. There were a few moments when each dancer was doing something a little different, but it all came back together to meet a cohesive structure. As it were, Effervescent Collective and INEVERYROOM were lucky to be one of the last bands playing before the afternoon got rained out. For those that stuck around after the rain started, there was a rain dance by Adam Endres and April Camlin.

It was a successful weekend for dance, but the two that stood out were, without a doubt, Caroline Marcantoni’s and ours (not to gloat).

-PE