Phoenix Dance Theater: Interactive Review – A mixed bill drawing on hip-hop, classic greats, and 2000s nostalgia | platform

MArcus Jarrell Willis wants us to rewind. Back to the good old days. Phoenix Dance Theater director has created a new piece, Suite Release, with fellow choreographer (and fellow Alvin Ailey alumnus) Josiah Marie Sorzano, an ode to the goodness of the dance floor, filtered through memories of 1990s hip-hop culture. Here is the voice of DJ Kool Herc, the godfather of hip-hop. Here is a group of friends, hanging out and enjoying the kind of connection you can only get by dancing together. The sound of Labrinth singing the hymn “How Great Thou Art” establishes the almost spiritual nature of the workout, and then they break through Buju Banton, A Tribe Called Quest and the TV show’s theme “A Different World,” with all the energy freed from the dance floor (plus the guiding hand of the director) drawing on hip-hop, house and dancehall. Modernity intervenes to complicate matters, but the message is clear: Can we go back to the way it was?

From the recent past, this well-chosen mixed bill features two short revivals: Jarrell Willis’ “Nearest Relative,” from 2013, which contains playful antics in a sibling-like duet; Then Ed Mayhill’s book Why Do People Clap? From 2018, a highly enjoyable 13-minute piece, inspired by Steve Reich’s clapping music, that cleverly depicts percussion with agility and joy.

There’s also a new piece from the exciting choreographic duo of Travis Clausen-Knight and James Pitt (now known as PCK Dance) although in its own way it feels strangely dated. It has a lot to do with the music, that stuff is very powerful. In the Small Talk duet we have a troubled couple and a diagram of a home space: a lamp, a chair, and a rug. It has a great opening, dancer Tony Polo on the carpet as if stranded on an island; Darkness slowly rises as Schubert swells. Chopin comes next, and there are riches in the soundtrack that extract from the greats of classical music. It can color the gaps in the setting and in the inner lives of the characters. But then the (recorded) piano plays the first notes of Arvo Pärt’s Spiegel im Spiegel, the most widely used music in contemporary dance, and it feels as if it has been transported to the early 2000s (the piece was composed in 1978 but its ubiquity in dance came later).

The choreography of this stubborn, sometimes comical couple contains glimpses of Jiri Kylian and Mats Ek – the greats in their heyday a few decades ago – in their starchy straight limbs and mannered gestures, especially in the female role (danced by Dorna Ashuri). Polo makes more interesting movements, his broad frame is more flexible when he jumps in a crab-like position, and his energy is charged. Even his costume is better, his big suit looks really cool, while Ashuri wears a boring plain dress. But Gen Z is all about millennial nostalgia right now, so this is probably quite consistent, and actually very up to date. It is less about rewinding and more about inevitable cycles of culture.