Last Sunday, April 21 was the American premiere of Britain’s Jasmin Vardimon Company in Freedom, a full-fledged dance-theatre work clearly driven by the Pina Bausch mystique. To begin, the stage was transformed with two towering and moveable structures hung from the ceiling with strings, tubes, ropes
and what looked like sheets of dried leaves attached—a rain forest? Center stage was a hill-shaped mound of the dried leaves that would soon be mounted by a dancer. Soon the mound rippled, flattened, and dragged the dancer upstage. What ensued after were segments after segments of guided by movement-stories: wide arms
stretched and extended to the fingers that would follow with an abrupt fall; repeated falling in and out of the floor at great speed; a beautiful waltz-like duet danced on the knees; another with a human surf board; the
men scouring the stage as animals (sounds and all); a desperate solo en pointe; loud music; or text (“I want to tell you a story…”), to name only a few. All the while, the structures were manipulated in different groupings
by the brilliant dancers in each segment. The sheets of leaves would return in the end to wrap and engulf the first dancer…Vardimon’s cycling of emotions and questions came to an end?
Freedom was presented at Montclair State University’s "Peak Performances."
and what looked like sheets of dried leaves attached—a rain forest? Center stage was a hill-shaped mound of the dried leaves that would soon be mounted by a dancer. Soon the mound rippled, flattened, and dragged the dancer upstage. What ensued after were segments after segments of guided by movement-stories: wide arms
stretched and extended to the fingers that would follow with an abrupt fall; repeated falling in and out of the floor at great speed; a beautiful waltz-like duet danced on the knees; another with a human surf board; the
men scouring the stage as animals (sounds and all); a desperate solo en pointe; loud music; or text (“I want to tell you a story…”), to name only a few. All the while, the structures were manipulated in different groupings
by the brilliant dancers in each segment. The sheets of leaves would return in the end to wrap and engulf the first dancer…Vardimon’s cycling of emotions and questions came to an end?
Freedom was presented at Montclair State University’s "Peak Performances."
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