Review: NEW DIALECT at Oz Arts Nashville

Oz Arts Nashville presented New Dialect with the return of choreographer and Artistic Director Banning Bouldin's The Triangle and the world premiere of Rosie Herrera's First Fruit on Thursday, February 20 at 8pm. In a pre-performance talk, Bouldin announced the company would be touring throughout the southeast on a three-year initiative with South Arts. Bouldin described the creation process with Herrera, which New Dialect and Oz Arts Nashville co-commissioned. A hometown favorite, Bouldin and her company clearly have a devoted audience and partner with Oz Arts Nashville.

Herrera's work opened with three couples swaying together, each dancer covered head to toe in neon post-it notes. The couples hugged, stroked, writhed together, the post-its ruffling and falling to the ground. The post-its gave the dancers a pixelated, Lego figurine look. Simple movements became comical, as sensual motions rippled in neon shades. Herrera moved couples in repetitive phrasing building to bigger and fuller expressions of a balance or turn. Dancers walked on all fours, stood with knees opening and closing, post-its constantly rustling. Dancers brought more post-its on stage, shoveling them around with cardboard. The neon and child-like play gave lightness to the emotional depth of the score, which included lyrics from Juan Gabriel's Hasta que te concoci, "and I realized too late that I shouldn't love you."

One couple burrowed into a pile of post-its, emerging with shirts stuffed with post-its looking like expectant football players. They moved together, post-its dropping from their clothes. Becca Hoback entered the stage in a long orange dress, playing with a single post-it note as though it were from a significant other. Lenin Fernandez entered with a fall on to the floor. Hoback batted the post-it with frustration, Fernandez jerked and seized as though it were his body being swatted by Hoback. Other dancers filled the stage, using cardboard to shuffle and sweep post-its. One dancer swung another by her ankles as her arms swept through the colorful swirl of paper. David Flores and Kira Fargas-Mabaquiao's pas de deux mixed light and heavy emotions. Fargas-Mabaquiao placed post-its on various parts of her body, which Flores kissed and wrapped his body around hers. They skipped and leaped together; Flores did significant partnering from the floor. They bit post-it notes apart from each other's mouths. Herrera used changes in music and spotlights to guide focus on each section. The post-its allowed one to feel the swiftness with which dancers moved, as they rattled and floated with each dancer darting through the space. Herrera gave another dimension to the already three-dimensional experience.

Whereas, Herrera moved dancers in separate groupings, The Triangle moved dancers primarily as a collective even when split into duos and trios. Both works utilized simple props and costumes for dramatic effect. A dancer in a long black skirt, lifted high by other dancers for larger than life scale entered the stage. Dancers in black body suits began rappelling out from underneath her skirt, all tethered to her by long black cords. One dancer ran in place out in front of the group, still attached by his cord. Dancers folded and unfolded into angular shapes, at times looking arachnid-like. They leaned, tilted and rolled around each other and their umbilical cord-like tethers. At times, they looked like a carousel, rising and falling while rotating around its axis. Pace picked up, soon all the dancers were running, periodically falling to the floor.

James Barrett remained alone on stage, running in place, still bound to something or someone off stage. The score included sounds of applause. Dancers dressed in blue jumpsuits pushed brooms across the floor, wiped the floor with towels, and placed chairs around. Barrett sat in a chair, attended to like an athlete; one dancer sprayed water into his mouth, another dancer patted him dry. It could also have been a NASCAR pit stop, carwash, or janitorial crew.

Some of the dancers had flowered masks covering their faces; they began dancing with the chairs. In her pre-performance talk, Bouldin described the work as deeply personal, in reference to her challenges with multiple sclerosis (MS), but not specifically about her. There was a canon of dancers falling out of chairs. Dancers still dressed in jumpsuits partnered dancers and chairs. Three dancers sat in a row of chairs facing the audience; they shifted and swayed as on a roller coaster. Dancers sat in chairs watching projections of themselves dancing. David Flores in a white button down shirt and black pants partnered Emma Morrison in her black body suit with a red and white flowered mask on her face. He re-attached her tether, but this time she was secured to herself. At one point, they rolled upstage, head to head.

There was light and dark in the piece; but, as Bouldin mentioned in her talk, MS showed her what it was like to live life fully abled and differently abled. She described MS as showing her other pathways to strength. Dancers appeared at the mercy of an unknown entity, its web constantly shifting in and out of the present. At times, the connection appeared unifying, as though each dancing body represented an aspect of the individual, bringing the body into harmony. At other times, it seemed like a safety net, which periodically became a snare.

Becca Hoback returned, wearing the long, full black skirt from the opening. She dragged herself along the floor, using her arms, the skirt twisting around her lower half like a mermaid tail. She reached the jenga-stacked chairs at the rear center of the stage, a jumbled sculpture. With unsteady effort, she knocked them down. The challenges dancers navigated in this work, crawling and falling, did not seem to seek sympathy. They relied on those around them and available resources to create a new way. There was beauty and there was brokenness, or the idea that things were not always what they could be, but that even in disappointment, possibility still existed.

Bouldin's work premiered at Oz Arts Nashville in 2019; the dancers and the work matured within the past year. New Dialect dancers are stunning; they represent diverse physicality but move with unified quality of movement. They all have strong technical capacity but are fully enjoyable to observe in pedestrian vocabulary. This was a rigorous program for a small company; Bouldin's dancers moved with boldness, grace, and restraint.

Photo by Tiffany Bessire.