Voci
Voci The Garden Theatre
Winter Garden, FL</strong>
I’m always surprised when Modern Dance appears in the wilds of West Orange County. It seems more at home in urban lofts and rough and tumble storefronts, but a large and appreciative audience turned out for this collection of 8 numbers. “Behind Raggedy Ann’s Smile” opens the soirée (Choreographed by Tara Lee Burns). This Voci Favorite plays dress up with 3 dolls who furiously remove and replace their skits and bloomers as they search for the perfect balance of sultry charm and aloof feminism. This perennial is a good marker for what Voci expects of its audience – tonight the dancers all wore multiple layers of clothing, not so much to ward off the fall chill but to prevent any whisper of impropriety.
Things became a little more high tech for “Flow: Thoughts from the Right Lobe” (Choreography by Adrienne Nichols) A overhead camera projected her motions on a back screen, giving us three dancers for the price of one – we see Ms. Rose’s motion on stage, her shadow lagging by about 10 nanoseconds, and the screen with a few seconds of web cam delay. If you miss something but are quick, you’ll just catch it on the back screen. Oddly, a rather long dead spot followed this dance, leaving us to wonder if something bad had happened backstage. The program was little help; it merely says “-pause-“, not “- really long and uncomfortable pause-“.
Three more routines followed before the regular intermission and the second half of the evening’s entertainment, including work by Cheryl Man, Ellie Potts Barrett, Lucas Crandall and Genevieve Bernard. Another projection-based piece opened the second act. “Black White and Silent”(Choreographed and performed by Ms. Burns) used silent film images and long gone stars of yesteryear as a backdrop for the dance which adding a Lost-In-Time” feel to the movement. Following was the enigmatic “Parcht” (Choreography by Ellie Potts Barrett). While it’s often hard to assign meaning to all dance, the muted orange and brown costumes made me think: “Fall. They are dancing to fall.” Blunt, perhaps, but subtlety isn’t always essential for good art. Despite the odd dead spot in the first act, Voci entertained and took us in some new directions, and the star spangles ceiling of the garden Theater set their work in an elegant and dreamy space.
For more information of Voci Dance, visit http://www.vocidance.org
For more information on The Garden Theatre in Winter garden, please visit http://wgtheater.org
</em>
