“It’s not over”
I think you heard young dancer Logan Farmer whisper Thursday while walking towards the center of the Sky Room at the French Institutes Alliance Française. “Encounter” by Kimberly Bartosik.
Immediately Farmer raised his eyes and arms. It was the attitude of someone longing to escape, to be taken away. It was the hypothetical posture of Mary, the Rapture, the Alien Abduction. It turned out to be the core gesture of an hour-long dance.
Gia Kourlas, who reviewed Bartosik’s 2020 work Through the Mirror of Their Eyes for The New York Times, said it was similar to Netflix’s sci-fi series Stranger Things. The similarity continues with “The Encounter,” which was performed as part of the Crossing the Line Festival.
As before, the cast is made up of young performers — Bartosik’s child, River Bartosik-Murray, now 15, joined by newcomers Farmer and Ellington Tanner, this time pairing older professional dancers, including Bartosik. As before, the sound design by Sivan Jacobovitz (here a collaboration with Bartosik and his Frank Napolski) is a cinematic underscore of wind, low rumblings and high-frequency signals, with supernatural or extraterrestrial life. suggests an encounter with
And as before, the world is in chaos, as evidenced by the dancers continuing to run in circles. They may resist the current for a moment and cling to someone else, but they must keep running and keep moving.
A few things have changed. “Through the Mirror” premiered in his March 2020, just before the pandemic halted performances. Program notes tie Encounter to things like Bartosik’s return to rehearsal studios after lockdown. We have all been through a lot.
So, perhaps, an upward longing. Halfway through the work, most of the cast gathers on stage and Farmer comes back and stretches his arms out to the sides and toes up as he says, “I’m ready.” Others pick her up and walk around, some offering her to walk on her crouched back so she doesn’t have to touch the ground. It’s a bit like the ‘The Unanswered Question’ section of George Balanchine’s ‘Ivesiana’, except it’s less spooky and more gentle. It is a child’s dream and is helped by others.
In “The Encounter,” the desire to escape seems to alternate with the desire to find a connection on this earth. The performers constantly look at each other, looking into each other’s eyes. Professional dancers — Bartosik veterans Joanna Kotze and Burr Johnson, plus Mac Twining, Ryan Pliss, Kalub Michael Thompson, and Claude Johnson — struggle to balance, cantilever each other, and share weight. Twining and Priss seem to be lovers.
Among the many comings and goings, the Baltic is rarely present. Later in her work, however, she and Burr Johnson lie on the floor, she faces upwards on top of him, and he lifts her into her rapture pose. And of course he has to drop her off. And another dancer, Thompson, uses Johnson’s large body to temporarily take off.
Thompson is a performer Bartosik discovered in an early community outreach version of “The Encounter” in Buffalo. (She also does “The Encounter: Italia” and “The Encounter: Asheville.”) The integration of non-professionals and young performers with New York professionals influences the work in ways that Bartosik can’t seem to control. give. For one thing, the amateurs make the pros look affected, and their danceier bits seem unnecessary.
I think the climax of “The Encounter” comes when Baltic-Murray turns his young face to the light (designed by his father, Roderick Murray) and yearns for a way out. head to shoulder. But then Kotze and Johnson (on the bar again) return and balance, with Johnson in the final “Take Me” pose. It’s not over when Bartosik-Murray and Thompson hug, but it should be.
Kimberly Bartosik
Until Saturday at the France Institute Alliance Française. fiaf.org.