DANCE TRAIN

Choreographer Thomas Warfield and staff, dedicated student performers, and the design team at the  Rochester Institute of Technology and the National Technical Institute for the Deaf, created a refreshing dance production that caught the audience by surprise. They did the unexpected and did it well. Dance Train, a lively antidote to the dreary winter days and cloudy lake effect of upstate New York, scrambled computer technology, scenic, light, animation and sound design ingeniously. A professional dance company would be wise to come up with a concept equal to the originality of the production.

Opening with a projected image of a New York City subway map, Dance Train rode the rails from one subway stop to the next, to a variety of ethnic locations criss-crossing the city. When the subway car on stage split in half, sliding back into the wings, the panoramic space revealed filled with well thought out, sharply calibrated projections and graphics - more or less connected to the subway stop – but nonetheless mobile with fun and wit. For the most part, it worked.  Company dance numbers and solos, a mix of jazz, ballet, flamenco,  mime, and risky performance riffs, added to the fun; connecting to the visual effects more often than not.

Among the highlights: 

42^nd  Street at Tin Pan Alley, if such a place exists these days, offered an Irving Berlin song:  ”We’re A Couple of Swells”. A take on the old Judy Garland and Fred Astaire song and dance routine, the company of young dancers performed with unabashed good will and unambiguous energy; an occasional misstep thrown in for good measure. Warfield, dancing with the students in the role of mentor and time setter, held himself in check - giving the young performers enough room to do what they needed to do.   

At the 116^th  street station in Spanish Harlem, half asleep dreamers, their heads bobbing to the rhythm of screeching train wheels, jerked to a stop. Shocking images alluding to the  murderous Twin Towers disaster shot out from the ubiquitous third rail. Chris Cole rose, a waif out of the day of the dead, and recited “But I Was On the Plane”. An appeal from a dead boy killed in the disaster to his mother; asking forgiveness for not having come home on time. A slow dance on the killing ground, a shudder of subterranean flight; other-worldly and movingly poignant, gave the moment gravity.    

The measured beat of the subway rails segued into a simple and quietly eloquent flamenco dance, with Jack Edward Smith on guitar, and dancer Christina Almeida in the spot light. Rather than indulge in an apotheosis of clichéd tourist gestures, choreographer Marisa Guzman used Almeida’s graceful turns of the hands combined with gradually hardening clicks of the heels, to suggest an Andalusia fantasy; a quiet triumph of pleasure over sorrow. Counter pointed with Warfield’s choreography, using student  dancers Janis Steinheider and Frankline Smith, the fantasy was a well turned antidote to the previous shocker.

Warfield invited the audience to join him creating a dance. The young people flocked up on stage, both the hearing and the hearing impaired, and were led with skill by the choreographer through a series of improvisations that revealed possibilities. Later when Warfield returned to the stage, the lone passenger on the dance train, he reproduced the gestures of the young stalwarts who had joined him. Ingeniously done, danced to a warm cello solo, Warfield proved conclusively that dance can be created by observation and familiarity with the common gestures of every day life. We learned something.

The highlight of the production was an uproariously funny scene titled “Cyberland, PAC”. It took place at the Wall street subway stop. You immediately think of the missing  twin towers, a smoldering landscape of devastation. But somehow,  with the bamboozled grace of an antic god,  the cyberspace ironies took over. Led by actor Chris Gruber, with appropriately creative music by Benoit Jutras and David Newman, the frenetic dancers costumed imaginatively by Joyce Song Wright, captured the virus warfare and madness of computer wizardry. A large arrow pointedly traveling across a Word menu on the screen led the helter-skelter dancers into a maze of obsessive frenzy. It all goes to show you what a few well chosen clicks of the mouse will do.

Warfield has a love of show biz. His work combines effects with graceful moments of lyricism; he takes risks. When he holds back his propensity to dominate the stage, his work with students and the surrounding community succeeds in innovative ways.  In New York City it would have cost hundreds of thousands of dollars,  if not millions,  to stage this kind of show. The Rochester community is blessed with the presence of innovative educators like Warfield and the staff at the National Technical Institute of the Deaf and the Rochester Institute of  Technology. Dance Train combined sign language, dance, creative staging and delightful scenic design and special effects. It was done with a rare  innovative conception, embraced by joy.

© 2002 Ned Bobkoff

..

All articles are archived on this site.
To access the Archives .

© 2002 Aviar-DKA Ltd. All rights reserved (including authors’ and individual copyrights as indicated). No
part of this material may be reproduced, translated, transmitted, framed or stored in a retrieval system for
public or private use without the written permission of the publisher and the individual copyright holder.
For permissions, contact publisher@scene4.com

.