New York, August /September, 2010
MELT under the Manhattan Bridge
Choreography Noémie Lafrance
Score Erin McGoningle
Dancers Elizabeth Wilkinson, Mare Hieronimus, Teresa Kochis, Celeste Hastings, Ori Lenkinski, Adi Kfir, Meghan Merril, Marcy Schlissel, Sarah Donnelly
Beeswax Costumes Noémie Lafrance
Technical Director Spencer Evans
Lighting Design Thomas Dunn
Producer Natalie Galazka
August 18-22 & 25-29, Sept 2-5 & 9-12, 2010
Under the Manhattan Bridge at the Salt Pile located at:
74 Pike Slip near South Street, NYC
I was there when Noemie Lafrance first presented the concepts for Melt as a work in progress at the Black and White Gallery in Brooklyn in 2003. The idea was compelling enough that I kept in touch with the choreographer, and stayed on the mailing list as her work progressed. This presentation presented August and Sept of 2010 is the completed version of that earlier work. Noemie, as a choreographer has a keen sense, when it comes to finding a location for her work. The Salt Pit is an interesting enough site, with its other worldly appearance, but also staging the presentation under the structure of the Manhattan Bridge engages a whole different scope and scale of urban landscape. The roar of the bridge traffic is almost deafening. While waiting for the event, one wonders how a production can be staged in such cacophony?
What is remarkable is that not only does MELT survive this urban onslaught, but it weaves the tempest into the production with the genius of Erin McGoningle’s ambient sound track. To say the costume design and the staging of the work is remarkable is an understatement. Ms. Lafrance has a sculptor’s eye for the spectacle. The work is thus compelling. The dancers strapped in their perch fixed to a 15 foot wall, work within a limited palate of movement to leave a signature of their activity upon the stone surface, this imprint the result of their ever melting bee’s wax and lanolin costumes. The scene is straight out of Dante at times, with the dancers wreathing movements and gestures reminiscent of that author’s depictions of hell. What could be more hell like than to be strapped to a hot stone wall under the bowels of the Manhattan Bridge? Yet there is euphoria in this work. There is a liberation of spirit. As the program introduction states, “Eight dancers….melting until their souls escape their ephemeral bodies and disintegrate into light.”
Although some dance critics found it hard to sustain themselves on such a limited palate of movement, I believe Ms. Lafrance is a force to be reckoned with. She is a choreographer with the sensibility of a visual artist which makes her work captivating and imaginative. Her work is something to keep an eye on.
