The Trey McIntyre Project launched into its season at a matinee Saturday with an exuberant display of the company’s signature qualities: graceful athleticism, provocative ideas and exploration, and a growing sense of conceptualized theatricality.
The dancers sang, told jokes and recited poetry for more than 1,100 fans at the Morrison Center. For the title piece, “The Unkindness of Ravens,” McIntyre brought the side lights out from the wings to create a stage within a stage with its own microphone on a stand.
“Ravens” featured a cast of five: Brett Perry, Ryan Redmond and three guest artists from the Korea National Contemporary Dance Company. The women came to Boise as part of a residency through the U.S. State Department program DanceMotion U.S.A., which sent TMP on a six-city tour of Asia last summer.
McIntyre’s choreography works with the tension between gravity and space. His dancers powerfully break the bounds and rebound to Earth as if connected by a bungee cord.
The Korean dancers — Tae Hee Kim, So Jin Lee and An Lee Chang — danced as though they can float. The contrast was lovely to watch in moments such as a duet with Lee and Redmond where they love, taunt and tease one another.
A group of ravens is called an “unkindness,” like a “murder” of crows, and this production is inspired by the black bird of Edgar Allen Poe fame. At the same time, McIntyre plays on the notion that these highly intelligent birds have a sense of humor.
The dancers are tricksters. Lee recites a poem in Spanish then tells a joke in English. A cigar-wielding Perry tells one in Korean.
The highly edited score ranges from the opening to “A Chorus Line” to Korean Buddhist chants and Johnny Cash. Sandra Woodall’s tight, black-leather-looking costumes with skull caps offer a cool, unisex look that says we’re all birds here.
The program brought the return of “Bad Winter,” a piece McIntyre created last year. From Chanel DaSilva’s splashy solo to “Pennies from Heaven” to Travis Ward and Ashley Werhun’s wrenching duet, it was an interesting contrast to “Ravens” and the closing “Ladies and Gentle Men,” another theatrical work, this one inspired by the 1970s book, recording and ABC television special “Free to Be You and Me. Though all three pieces have their merits, the riveting “Bad Winter” is a reminder that all you really need are talented dancers and raw emotion to get it done.
The closing “Ladies and Gentle Men” is a McIntyre masterpiece. Along with the also-autobiographical “High Lonesome” and “Leatherwing Bat” he re-examines past cultural dynamics and brings them into focus for a new era. Here, he plays with gender roles and identity beyond gender with subtle, powerful strokes. And his dancers make it happen, from Werhun’s dynamic solo — swirling in a blue “girly” dress — to Benjamin Behrends’ performance as the confused Dudley Pippin trying to find his way in the world.
Dana Oland: 377-6442
