Hatched Indeed!

“Welcome to Los Angeles!” I love to hear that. To me, this city is brand spankin’ new. And speaking of brand new things, here’s to “HATCHED: An evening of brand new dances”.

What a venue. At 209 S. Garey Street downtown, in a district where warehouses galore are converting into sites for art, The Open Space pairs the flavor of the neighborhood with an impressive postmodern performance space. For “HATCHED,” the second story at 209 has been divided in two on the diagonal, giving the stage a corner where the white wall and the high, barred windows of the warehouse meet. The sound and lighting equipment is part of the balancing act, providing a quality stage without compromising the realities of the building. Manager Hassan Christopher has a real gem available for rent.

I was right to infer the Loyola Marymount University background of just about everyone involved. (This seemed to encompass the audience as well, present company and her pal excepted.) The program opened with a video piece that was Alaina Williams’ senior project there, and it handily introduced, in retrospect, the LMU aesthetic. “for your viewing pleasure” put Williams’ tidy physicality at the center of the screen, which itself was beautifully displayed on the white wall of The Open Space. The idea she introduced (verbally) was ownership of one’s body, and while it got a little lost in the collegiate stock of movements (here is a sequential turn, here is a pregnant skyward reach), the conclusion of an on-screen Williams manipulating? manipulated by? a long band of red cloth was a satisfying one. I’d love to see the video serve as a background to that solo; I’d also love to see more of Stephen Lee’s handiwork in video editing.

“Constrained Relieve” brought a trio of women to the floor, and while their steely expressions never matched the emotional pertinence of the stylized three’s-a-crowd partner shuffle, the precision of the dancing nearly made up for it. Both qualities must have been deliberate on the part of choreographer Stephanie Jamieson, but the reasons are beyond me. The qualities of The Open Space went woefully under-exercised, but again, these women are fierce movers. I take my recollection of more movement than music to mean that the piece set the bar high for the autonomy of the dancing.

Unfortunately, Diana Delcambre’s “For Yogi” missed that mark. The ode to the outdoorsy put a cast of six dancers in flannel, the live half fresh out of a tent, the filmed half in the great outdoors itself. The video made modern dance and a topical setting mesh by default, but the live performance never reached that point. Furthermore—and I’ll grant that quality dance with a laugh is tricky business—Delcambre set herself back when the voiceover of Jim Gaffigan’s stand-up took immediate comedic precedence.

My intermission cookie was delicious.

Alice MacDonald, the recent LMU graduate in charge of presenting “HATCHED,” faced the same funny dance challenge with “Out Fitted”. These movers are incredibly skilled, and the set design (an ambient closet of Goodwill pell-mell) was spot-on. But until MacDonald and her quintet decide why silly shoppers turn into trained movers and back again, and why only one only once struts through the proverbial fourth wall (third here), I’m not sure I buy it.

Evan Hart Marsh’s solo “Prana” was a nice change of pace once the Goodwill disappeared: movement for movement’s sake, meet primal expressivity. And dramatic lighting. And musculature. And dance that tells the music what to do, at least for a little while. Solid.

Finally, I love Maurice Ravel. I love “Blues Moderato”. I love the windows at The Open Space, whose black drapery finally came off for MacDonald’s “Frame of Reference” duet. I even love the way the LMU vocabulary was transposed to the ledges, the walls, the light from outside, and even that pesky corner! But I need to see a motive because, in the end, modern dance movement is weird. It’s not a social ceremony or an evolutionary tic, and enrapturing though every dancer was in “HATCHED”, it’s not an exercise in virtuosity. Motives seem to be the Achilles heel of dance in academia, and this performance wasn’t much of an exception.

Nevertheless, I applaud MacDonald’s hard work and her band of collaborators. “HATCHED” was a great beginning for a brand new Angelen(a), and worth all fifteen dollars.

Seventeen if you count the cookie.


LADB