Lydia Johnson Dance
Martha Graham Studio
New York, New York
December 5, 2024
Chapters, Summer House, Time…and again (excerpts), Legacy (premiere)
Jerry Hochman
I’m not a fan of minimalism, particularly minimal movement in dance. Frankly, I usually find it boring. Then, two years ago, along came Lydia Johnson Company (that is, my first exposure to it). That introduction created the Lydia Johnson Company exception: minimal movement that says more by saying less. But my observations then were primarily based on one dance I saw on that prior program (For Eli) that clearly said something profound.
Lydia Johnson Dance (“LJD”) has now returned, this time performing at the Martha Graham Studio space at Westbeth, in Greenwich Village. Here there seemed little on which to attach any meaning in the minimal movement presented.
It’s still quite extraordinary.
(l-r) Laura Di Orio, Cara McManus and Maia Culbreath
in Lydia Johnson’s “Summer House”
Photo by Danica Paulos for @nelshelbyfilms
Even though they may be considered abstract, I was able to discern some meaning in the examples of minimal movement (I’ll explain what I mean by that below) in the first two program pieces as much because Johnson telegraphs the subject area of her dance as my own ability (aka compulsion) to scratch some meaning out of nothing. But even if a meaning or definable subject area is there, it’s not as important as the way Johnson and her company of nine dancers (plus one guest artist: Craig Williams, a former soloist with New York City Ballet) present it.
I predetermined the first dance on the program, Chapters, to be a take on a standard “relationship dance” based on the dance’s title (“Chapters” in people’s lives) as well as, in some cases, on the titles of some of the accompanying music and the number of dancers in the segment. And the second was clued, at least to me, by its title, Summer House, to be an examination of the separate but at times overlapping or intersecting lives of people living together in one space or under one roof, like in a summer house, perhaps on the Jersey Shore. [Inspired, maybe, by the TV series “Jersey Shore,” “The Real World,” or “Big Brother” (or a plethora of other similar unreality shows).]
Chapters is indeed a standard operating relationship dance, except it isn’t a standard operating relationship dance in the manner in which it’s put together. And Summer House does reflect the lives of people comingling (or not) in separate living spaces within one larger environment.
However, what these dances may or may not “mean” or “are about” or whether my crystal ball predicted accurately isn’t as critical here as the way that Johnson attacks her subject, whatever that may be, and the precision with which her dancers present it. Initially, I thought the movement in last Thursday’s program was basically sterile Cunningham-ish (which, as I’ve often admitted, is possibly a consequence of the limited exposure I’ve had to Cunningham pieces), which would have been appropriate, I suppose, for dances presented in the house that Cunningham built.
But there’s more here than unemotional, connectionless, and/or purposeless movement of bodies in space. Minimalism is the overt style, but there’s nothing minimal about what Johnson and her dancers are communicating.
(l-r) Laura Di Orio, Cara McManus, Michael Miles,
and Maia Culbreath in Lydia Johnson’s “Summer House” ‘
Photo by Danica Paulos for @nelshelbyfilms
A year or so ago New York City Ballet packaged its season’s publicity with the phrase “poets of gesture.” With NYCB, that phrase, however valid it may be in the abstract, does not dominate its presentations. But with LJD, that same phrase is central to it. The simple touch of a hand on another’s back, or shoulder, or chest speaks volumes, as do reactive movements such as reaching out toward something or bending to the stage floor while seated or sprawling across a chair. Most significantly, unlike what I’ve seen of Cunningham, there are emotional connections established between one dancer and another, or among individual dancers within groups of more than two – communicated not by facial expressions (which remain stoic throughout) but by the intensity and insistency of the movement itself.
Maia Culbreath (standing)
and Lydia Johnson Dance in “Chapters”
Photo by Danica Paulos for @nelshelbyfilms
There’s nothing here that’s random, or that isn’t but was created to appear that way. Every movement by every dancer, and the interactions of movements with others, is precisely choreographed, and looks it –with no margin for error in the execution. But rather than looking regimented, which one might expect under such circumstances, here the choreography looks less regimented than proscribed and essential to the significance of the movement and the moment. If the dancers’ execution wasn’t spot on, Johnson’s intention may have been compromised (allowing for a few minor delayed reactions – which only proves that her dancers aren’t machines}.
Finally, as a general observation, the sequencing of movement is every bit as complex here as it is, for example, for corps dancers in a large company, notwithstanding that here the movement and those dancing it are individuals rather than large groupings. So instead of having lines of dancers executing ingenious movements in tandem or sequentially, and shifting unpredictably between one line or group of dancers and another, here that same choreographic patterning is exhibited just as ingeniously and unpredictably, but may involve three or four dancers rather than thirty or forty.
And I must emphasize that not everything in the LJD dances presented is limited to meaningful gestures. There is “dance” as a viewer might normally expect (except for Summer House, which to my recollection is almost exclusively gesture – save for an abundance of movement that can take place while at least one party is seated). But to me what expansive stage movement there is is, with only a few exceptions, a means to a gestural end.
Gracie Zytynski and Justin Lynch
in Lydia Johnson’s “Chapters”
Photo by Danica Paulos for @nelshelbyfilms
The program’s first two dances are presented in component segments, each choreographed to a different piece of music. In Chapters, the first segment (danced by Gracie Zytynski and Justin Lynch to “The Time Curve Preludes” by William Duckworth) was launched with the effervescence of a couple giddy in the beginning of a relationship, one that might be considered a “prelude” to something more; the second, with company veteran Laura Di Orio and Michael Miles oohing at each other (the music’s title is “oOo,” by Johan Lindvall) in part without moving a facial muscle – just by, among other things, looking into each other’s eyes; the third, featuring Cara McManus and Oscar Antonio Rodriguez (to “Time Curve Preludes No. 2,” also by Duckworth) displaying a relationship that is beginning to fall apart – a “prelude” to its end; the fourth, where the sense of loss, imminent or feared, is conveyed by all three couples plus three other dancers (Maia Culbreath, Emma Conrad, and Natalia Nikitin), perhaps to expand the scope of the feeling (the music is “Don’t Go” by Christopher Dennis Coleman). The fifth segment, to music titled “Petrachor” (the word itself means the earthy smell of rain interacting with earth after a long dry spell), involves only the three dancer pairs, and appeared to me to have been a somber accounting of their respective relationships.
Laura Di Orio and Michael Miles
in Lydia Johnson’s “Chapters”
Photo by Steven Pisano
The “narrative” as I’ve described it (or some other narrative if another is appropriate) isn’t as significant as the movement quality that encourages a viewer to get to wherever Johnson wants the viewer to go without any of the emotional and physical constructions usually used to accomplish the same thing. The movement is reduced to its essence, and then distilled further, but there’s still a connection between characters, and either a specific or generalized meaning, or purpose, behind the gestures. It’s Eau de Vie in the form of a dance.
To augment the above with yet more meandering metaphors, at times the result looks almost like sign language. Indeed, there’s a relationship between the movement quality that Johnson presents here and sign language – except Johnson’s movement is put together in a way that makes it all look connected, like stills from a film, rather than staccato, even when the movement itself is angular (as it is more often than not). Gesture in LJD dances is far more than sign language, even if my description may make it sound that way.
The same observations hold true for Summer House (which is older, having premiered in 2011 as opposed to 2023 for Chapters). Here, with the overall “non-narrative narrative” construction I’d given it, the dance is more successful, and somewhat more fascinating. But it’d be successful even without conforming to my pre-determined framework.
Laura Di Orio and Michael Miles
in Lydia Johnson’s “Summer House”
Photo by Danica Paulos for @nelshelbyfilms
As with pieces I saw in the prior LJD program I attended two years ago, the only “set” is an assortment of chairs placed at different points on stage and then repositioned as necessary by the dancers. There isn’t much stage space to play with, so the separation from one chair (or set of chairs) to another isn’t as distinct as it should be, but nevertheless it’s apparent. [If I’m wrong as to the essential “stories” Johnson tells, then we’d still have spatial separations, but for choreographic rather than narrative purpose.]
Summer House is choreographed to a variety of brief musical pieces by Philip Glass. [For the dance’s five segments, they’re respectively “Etude No. 2,” “Etude No. 9,” “Etude No. 1,” “Tissue No. 7,” and “Song VII.”] The Glass pieces are deceptively simple, as is the movement that Johnson has created to accompany them. In each, one set of dancers in one “grouping” of chairs may interact with each other, and one or some or all of the dancers in chairs placed at a distance from them may react in some way to what the other dancers are doing. This allows for an extraordinary choreographic palette considering how limited the breadth of movement is. One reaction may be for all of the dancers in the “separated” chairs to bend downward to the stage floor (while seated), or quickly raise their bodies upward (with their arms and hands following (or not, as each case may be) and pushing themselves backward (again, while still in their chairs). Each segment has its own chair alignment and spatial separation, and its own featured dancers.
Lydia Johnson Dance
in a prior performance of “Summer House”
Photo Courtesy of Lydia Johnson Dance
Narratively, assuming arguendo that that applies, it’s what often occurs in a summer rental situation or apartment building situation. Something may happen within one apartment or separated room that others are not aware of, or in some cases are aware of and react appropriately, but from separate apartments or rooms. What they’re doing (the “active” set of dancers) doesn’t matter as much as the fact that they’re unexpected and reacted to by the others. Indeed, in several segments Johnson has one dancer just sit on a chair oblivious to the action and reactive action taking place elsewhere, just as someone in one room in a house may not know or care about what’s going on in another room even though others do. There are only four dancers in this piece (Di Orio, Miles, McManus, and Culbreath), but from time to time it looks like there are dozens.
Most extraordinary, as I alluded to above, is how the “reacting” group of dancers presents the reaction. If there are three dancers in a separated group of chairs, in some cases they may all move the same way in response to what’s happening opposite them. But as the repetitive music continues, that reaction continues – it may be all three again repeating what they did moments earlier; a variation in the nature of the movement, or, most interestingly, where one (or two) of the three continues as before, but the third follows sequentially. So two may be leaning backward while one has her back bent forward; then they switch back, or further separate into individual sequential (or not) reactive motion. And, as with the other dances on the program, the movement is keyed to the music (on the beat, where appropriate), but not bound to it.
Lydia Johnson Dance
in a prior performance of “Summer House.”
Photo Courtesy of Lydia Johnson Dance
All this is what Balanchine (or any good choreographer) does while presenting a large group of corps dancers, except here, although the requirement of timing and precision may be the same, the gestural variety is, perhaps surprisingly, even more extensive. If a viewer stops wondering why they’re doing what they’re doing and focuses on what they’re doing, it’s quite an extraordinary display of limited but at the same time expansive, unemotional but at the same time emotional, interplay.
Laura Di Orio and Craig Hall
in Lydia Johnson’s ‘Time…and again”
Photo by Danica Paulos for @nelshelbyfilms
I saw Time…and again two years ago, and my opinion of it remains as expressed in my subsequent review – although presenting only three excerpted segments from the entire piece reduces its pleasant impact, and it hardly seemed worth the effort to have the entire company outfitted in “gowns” for this piece, considering there was so little of it. Nevertheless, it was good to again see Craig Hall. The choreography here appears less spartan and constrained than it did in this program’s prior dances, befitting the broader scope of the songs and the choreography to them, and I noticed that Hall managed to entice Di Orio to smile (she and most of the other dancers maintained a stoic expression throughout the evening, at least until the final part of the final dance).
Natalia Nikitin and Oscar Antonio Rodriguez
in Lydia Johnson’s ‘Time…and again”
Photo by Danica Paulos for @nelshelbyfilms
That final dance was the world premiere of Johnson’s Legacy, choreographed to two pieces from Terry Riley’s “In C.” Unlike the other dances on the program, this one appears more free-form – although of course it isn’t. That’s probably because it deals more directly with “feelings,” rather than movement pared to its essence. It’s not emotion pared to its essence either.
(l-r) Cara McManus, Emma Conrad and Laura Di Orio
in Lydia Johnson’s ‘Legacy”
Photo by Danica Paulos for @nelshelbyfilms
The dance’s title says it all. The dance concerns the legacy we bequeath to our children, and the torch that’s passed on to them. Although there are two distinct segments, the dance looks unstructured compared to everything else. It’s also louder, both in its musical choice and the stage movement, with what might be considered “real” movement across the stage. In the dance’s second segment, all of the company dancers previously identified are joined by four young dancers from the LJD School. The appearance isn’t brief. The young dancers move across the stage into the wings and back again, intermingle with the older ones, and, at the end, are carried offstage, four dancers cradling the young dancers as they leave.
In my prior review of For Eli, I mentioned that the sense of mourning there blanketed the stage. Here, there’s a different blanket of emotion: joy. While it’s true that inserting young dancers into a dance necessarily brings a measure of joy with it, in Legacy that seems to be the piece’s point. It’s a celebration. I think it might benefit by some enhancement when it’s re-presented, the choreography appears somewhat unfocused. But, again, in a piece like this few care. Considering that Time…and Again consisted of excerpts, Legacy proved the most entertaining dance on the program. All the LJD dancers participated (except for Lynch), and the four LJD School students (Uma Thomas Asnani, Elise Boikess, Fiona Hartman, and Esme Hughes) danced with requisite precision, and not a little joy.
LJD has carved a unique niche with its focus on minimal but comprehensive movement. And with its dancers, including particularly its more experienced nucleus of Di Orio (who is also the Company Manager, Rehearsal Director, and teacher at its school); Miles, who graduated from NYU Tisch School of the Arts with a BFA in dance and has performed with several companies that I routinely review; McManus has a resume that includes, among other achievements, graduating Summa Cum Laude from the Ailey-Fordham B.F.A. program with a double degree in Dance and Comparative Literature, and teaching Graham Technique at several noteworthy area schools – including the Martha Graham School, all of which contradict her stage presence (at least here) of being an emotionless 17 year old (ok, maybe 18); and Lynch, who earned a degree in music and followed that with a degree from Columbia Law School, and who, when not dancing, practices immigration law. With dancers carrying such pedigrees (the company’s other six dancers (one of whom was out with an injury), who have been with LJD less than a year, also have distinguished prior accomplishments) and a guest artist like Hall, who still remains as much a pleasure to watch as he was with NYCB; and of course with Johnson at the helm, it’s not surprising that LJD succeeds as well as it does.
I’ll look forward with great interest to seeing what Lydia Johnson Dance comes up with in its next appearance.
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