The faculty choreographers and dancers from the Cal State Long Beach Dance Department gave a sizable performance in the quaint Martha B. Knoebel Theater on Wednesday.
“Momentum,” a program of choreography created by the dance department faculty, included five dramatic pieces, beginning with a ballet by Sophie Monet.
Monet, an instructor of all levels of ballet technique, choreographed a beautiful piece called “Beyond the Edge.” In this ballet, one dancer’s movement set off the others. Five women and one man danced along horizontal lines of light that cascaded across the stage. Near the middle of the piece, a man and woman danced on separate lines of light, and then leapt to each other’s line. The end of this back-and-forth was the two coming together in between the lines.
The next piece, choreographed by Holly Johnston along with her dancers, was called “Collisions & Intersections.” In it, dancers in long Asian-inspired jackets, paired off and would begin to move only when spotlighted. They would lean and push off of each other and collapse to the ground. The performance was full of pushing, jumping, rolling and crawling on the floor. One audience member saw the dancers as sucking life out of each other; when one touched another, one would fall to the ground and dance as though they were wounded. When another dancer touched the “wounded” dancer, he or she would regain strength and begin dancing again. At one point, three male dancers seemed to battle each other. The jumping and kicking aspects of the piece were reminiscent of martial arts. This piece fit the best with the theme of the “Momentum” show.
The second half of the show began with an oddball. Susan McLain choreographed “Got Balls?,” a unique piece using pingpong and other balls as props. It began with one dancer in grey moving inside a ring of rope light. Pinball machine dings and pings began to play as the grey-dressed dancer bounced off of dancers in black. At the end of this section, the dancers put orange pingpong balls in their mouths and spit them out all over the stage.
After this strange sight, two dancers came out dressed in black and danced with each other in and around a circle. In a love story interlude, the couple passed a small red ball between them as it was their connection, their love. The ball attached to the suits in different places, including on the female dancer’s stomach. She encompassed the ball as if it were her life force.
The piece continued as the dancers lined up and passed a strange glowing ball between each other in different ways, some without using their hands. Then the dancers moved closer to the audience and put on sunglasses. This portion of the performance seemed out of place. The dancers did a funny freestyle with shades on, and then moved upstage before a shower of white pingpong balls rained down. As the curtain descended, some audience members had looks of confusion written on their faces.
Keith Johnson’s “The Presence of Absence” featured live piano music composed and played by Deanna Watkins. Though the piano playing was beautiful and the choreography worked well with the music, the piece didn’t evoke so much emotion or curiosity as some of the other pieces.
The piece began with four dancers, two males and two females, paired together as couples. Throughout the performance couples would separate and then come back together. It seemed to drag on and a storyline never developed. The only idea that surfaced was that the dancers tried to be with each other in couples, but there was never a solid connection made between two.
The momentum of the show ended on a high note with “LB-a-Go-Go,” a fun and energetic piece choreographed by assistant professor Andrew Vaca. The women dressed in ’60s go-go attire danced while a bright pink light glowed behind them. The piece was very posy and thematic of the era, paying tribute to beach bunnies like the character Gidget from popular movies in the 1960s. The women did the mash potato, the swim, and other fun dances. One section of the piece included the women silhouetted, dancing in rows starting upstage and working their way toward the audience. It was reminiscent of opening dance sequences of the older James Bond movies.
The show, with the exception of an oddball of a piece and one with an absence of presence, was beyond expectation.
