My first encounter with the work of David Dorfman dates back to 1988 in Prospect Park, when he was part of a free performance series staged by Celebrate Brooklyn. (Coincidentally, he performed a day after David Parsons and Company, the current iteration of which — Parsons Dance — follows him at Jacob’s Pillow this week.) That was 36 years ago, and just a year after the company’s birth, so please forgive me if my memory of the show is fuzzy; I remember it being good enough for me to be sure that David Dorfman Dance was on my list of must-see performances this summer as soon as I saw the troupe listed for a two-show engagement on the outdoor Henry J. Leir Stage.
I had not yet moved to the Berkshires when Dorfman first presented work at the Pillow in 1990 (after his first performance at the Pillow in 1987 as a dancer with Susan Marshall & Company), nor in 1997 when he presented Out of Season (The Athletes Project). Somehow I missed his Prophets of Funk at the Pillow in 2007, but looking at archival video, one can see a throughline of vivid dance theater infused with a large dose of humor, performed by a troupe of individualistic dancers. (Incidentally, one of those dancers is a young Kyle Abraham, who was at the Pillow just a few weeks ago to discuss his work MotoRover, created as part of a choreographic conversation with the late, great Merce Cunningham.)
For this summer’s engagement, Dorfman presented his 2020 work (A)Way Out of My Body, which — in the program notes — he calls “a meditation on the frailty and power of the body, the beauty of our collective will, the magic of touch, and the promise of hope.” These themes are borne out in a series of pure dance segments combined with vignettes that reveal his dancers’ other talents, including acting, singing, and playing the cello — even while in the air. Lizzy de Lise, a singer clad in gray — as opposed to the white costumes of the dancers (a nice bit of costume design by Oona Batez) — makes a few appearances, with a haunting voice accompanying original music (also credited to Sam Crawford, Zeb Gould, and Jeff Hudgins). All the performers have an engaging presence, and their personalities shine through.
The work transitions through many moods — somber, silly, sad, celebratory, quirky — peppered with narrative segments. There’s a lyrical segment in the beginning with dancers Lily Gelfand, Kashia Kancey, Nik Owens, and Claudia-Lynn Rightmare repeatedly forming a line across the stage —either back to front, side to side, or diagonally — then spinning off in fluid moves, then reforming the line, often in a different orientation. Early in the piece, a dancer asks, “What are you holding up today?” Throughout the hour-long work, dancers hold up each other. At one point, they carry Lisa Race — Dorfman’s wife — aloft horizontally across the stage as if she’s afloat, suggesting very common out-of-body experiences (dreams of flying through the air or floating on water), while at the same time reminding us of the bonds of gravity. A bit later we hear the lyrics, “I fell out of my body last night,” and “So nice to be weightless, hateless, shameless,” and the words, “My body was getting in my way.”
These themes become more, shall we say, down to earth when Dorfman takes the stage, dancing as he recites a monologue about how his elderly mother, suffering from MS, was losing her mobility. His movements become more frenetic and desperate as he explains that he was dancing so that his mother could walk. In his tale, after watching him dance over several performances, she takes three steps and then collapses as her body remembers her affliction. Later in the work, Dorfman returns to this story, reaching the conclusion that in reality, he was dancing so that he can walk, evoking the inevitable nature of aging and its effects on the older body. Fortunately, at age 69, his body thus far seems to defy those limits; he moves with speed, suppleness, and precision, commanding attention on the stage — both jester and elder statesman.
Most of the dance is performed by Dorfman’s personable, younger dancers, who shift from lyrical to comical throughout the hour-long piece. There’s an extended bit of humor when Claudia-Lynn Rightmire appears to be having a stomping fit; she’s joined by Gelfand, Kashia Kancey, and Nik Owens, who mimic her, waiting for her jumping stomps before they respond with their own movements, with diminishing enthusiasm. At one point, Kancey strikes a precarious arabesque, holding the balance on her toes for an extended period while Rightmire appears to be lost in the clouds, until Owens and Gelfand bring Rightmire back down to earth and into her stompy jumps so that Kancey can move out of the arduous, bravura hold.
Throughout the work, the dancers perform intriguing weight shifts that pose the question: Am I being supported or am I being held back? We see this in the ensemble work, as one dancer leans forward and the others hold onto her foot, or a hand. Are they helping her stay upright, or are they constraining her? They lend eccentric and caring support to each others’ balances. When Dorfman and Race dance together with much tenderness, they have moments of supporting each other head to head, back to back. In one instant, she leans all of her weight forward into his hand, held against her forehead. He releases his hand but in a split second catches her as she falls forward.
This outdoor performance of (A)Way Out of My Body came to audiences without its lighting and visual design elements. Fortunately, Mother Nature provided a gorgeous and fitting backdrop. Indeed, just as the dance came to its end, a gentle rain arrived as if on cue. This precluded the scheduled post-performance Q&A, which in my mind was all the better, to let the audience be with their own reflections on this moving piece of dance theater.
Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival in Becket, Massachusetts, runs through August 25.
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