Tom Gold Dance
Bohemian National Hall, Grand Ballroom
New York, New York
April 10, 2025
Le Voyage
Jerry Hochman
The weather was miserable in Manhattan last week, including last Thursday, when Tom Gold Dance, a New York City-based classical dance company, presented the world premiere of Gold’s latest dance, Le Voyage. It may have been raining outside, but in the 4th floor Ballroom at Bohemian National Hall, spring was in the air, and on the stage. The dance lasts less than an hour, but it was an hour well-spent.
For this piece, Gold, the company founder and artistic director, abandoned his usual (at least in Manhattan) theater environment and proscenium stage, opting instead for a “theater in the round” concept – although in actuality it’s more of a theater in the square (the geometry of the “stage” area). To house it he found the Grand Ballroom at the Bohemian National Hall, an unpretentious building that I, and I suppose anyone living outside the boundaries of 73rd Street between 1st and 2nd Avenues, didn’t know existed.
(l-r) Cara Seymour, Emily Cardea,
and Jonathan Royce-Windham (foreground)
in Tom Gold’s “Le Voyage”
Photo by Titus Ogilvie-Laing
I suspect the building has people living there (permanently or temporarily), but I saw no such residents. I did see a Bohemian restaurant on the building’s street level, and that 4th floor Ballroom – an expansive space suitable for pep rallies, a concert hall (there’s a raised stage area at one end of the room), weddings, Bohemian bar mitzvahs, and a theater in the square. [The building has a Czechered (sorry) history, having been opened in 1896 to serve the Yorkville area’s Czech and Slovak immigrant communities, with funds raised in part from a benefit concert 4 years earlier led by Antonin Dvorak; and having recently undergone an extensive restoration. For more information relating to the building’s past and present, see its web-site: https://www.bohemiannationalhall.com/ .]
Le Voyage is Gold’s homage of sorts to the music of French New Wave cinema of the 1960s – 13 songs, most of which were written by Michel Legrand, who composed the scores for many French New Wave films. Its cast consisted of six dancers (Emily Cardea, New York City Ballet soloist Harrison Coll, Jourdan Epstein, Brian Gephart, Cara Seymour, and Jonathan Royse-Windham), a vocalist (Olivia Chindamo, reportedly The Juilliard School’s first-ever jazz voice graduate student), a pianist (Matthew Sheens, who also composed one of the songs in the piece), and a bassist (Martin Jaffe).
(l-r) Matthew Sheens, Olivia Chindamo, and Martin Jaffe
in Tom Gold’s “Le Voyage”
Photo by Titus Ogilvie-Laing
In addition to the Legrand songs, Gold, a former New York City Ballet soloist, advises that he was also inspired by the Moulin Rouge, which essentially provides the framework for the presentation of Gold’s dance. If the reader harbors memories of the 2001 Baz Luhrmann film “Moulin Rouge” that starred Nicole Kidman, this isn’t that. It’s more of a cabaret-type setting, and although there’s occasional emotional gloss and the sense of some overarching narrative to the dance, there really isn’t much of that either. Rather, Le Voyage is the re-expression of French New Wave film ambiance, ambiance that inherently makes the listener smile and remember, or escape to, less complicated times.
Legrand, who died in 2019, was a prolific music composer, arranger, conductor, singer, and jazz pianist. He composed over 200 film and television scores, and those for two of the films of French New Wave director Jacques Demy – “Les Parapluies De Cherbourg” (The Umbrellas of Cherbourg) (1964) and “Les Demoiselles De Rochefort” (The Young Girls of Rochefort) (1967) – resulted in Oscar nominations. [Legrand won his first Oscar for “The Windmills of Your Mind,” from the film “The Thomas Crown Affair” (1968), another for “Summer of ’42” (1971), and another for “Yentl” (1983).]
Most of the songs that Gold selected for the dance’s score emanate from the 1967 film, but not all of them – one, “Je Ne Pourrais Jamais Vivre Sans Toi” (I Can’t Live Without You or I Will Wait for You) is from “Les Parapluies De Cherbourg”; “L’Arlesienne,” was composed by pianist Sheens; another, “Que reste-il de nos amours” (What Remains of Our Love, or I Wish You Love) by Leo Chauliac, was first performed in Francois Truffaut’s 1968 film “Baisers volés” (Stolen Kisses); and one, C’est Le Printemps” (It’s Spring; or It Might as Well Be Spring) written by Rogers and Hammerstein and Jean Sablon, is from the film “State Fair.”
Olivia Chindamo (center) with Tom Gold Dance in “Le Voyage”
Photo by Titus Ogilvie-Laing
Le Voyage is indeed a voyage, a voyage to an imaginary place on a movie theater screen or to imaginary or remembered relationships. But it’s more than just a travelogue or remembrances of things past. It’s a voyage back to a different time and place that’s more ephemeral than real.
That’s the spirit of Le Voyage. It’s a voyage of the heart and mind, if not the body, to a place of peace, of relaxation, of romance, of casual entertainment on a cruise ship, of Fred and Ginger or Gene (who starred in “An American in Paris,” as well as “Les Demoiselles De Rochefort”), of French being spoken, of Catherine Deneuve, of French New Wave films and the dusty small cinemas like the Thalia that were adventurous enough to show them, and of champagne being poured into the hearts of welcoming albeit Old Wave politically angst-ridden souls.
Before I get too taken with highfalutin imagery, what Le Voyage really is is a set of frothy-looking dances choreographed to music/songs that most of us take for granted when we see a film. High-level background noise. Separated from the films for which they were composed, they’re simple, and wonderful.
Cara Seymour and Harrison Coll in Tom Gold’s “Le Voyage”
Photo by Titus Ogilvie-Laing
But even though the dance’s ambiance is simple, the program that Gold has shepherded isn’t. It’s serious fun. And soup to nuts, everything is choreographed so there’s the appearance of a narrative, even though there isn’t one.
Chindamo, with her lilting, jazzy, lightly-accented voice, gets things moving, proceeding down an aisle to the four-cornered stage, liltingly rendering the sounds of “Les Pont Transbordeur” (The Transporter Bridge) from “Les Demoiselles De Rochefort.” [There really was a Pont Transbordeur, in Marseilles.] As her rendition of the song concludes, the dancers gradually make their way down the aisles, and Chindamo retreats to the elevated stage area, joining the other two musicians who had been accompanying her. [All the music used here was played live; nothing was taped.] The next song, from the same film, is “Nous voyageons de ville en ville” (We travel from town to town).
It’s tempting to say that the dancers on stage travel from town to town, but Gold’s choreography isn’t that specific – and shouldn’t be. It’s the ambiance that he’s going for, not the details. But as the dance proceeds, the details – not of the travels, but of the choreography – matter. What’s most impressive about Le Voyage is that it’s nothing like the Gold choreography I’ve previously seen, and nothing of the choreography is the same from song to song/dance to dance other than all of it being admirably bubbly.
One of the finest aspects of Le Voyage, beyond its consistent ambiance, is that Gold has imbued each dance with its own sensibility, not only varying the number and identities of the dancers on stage for any particular song/dance and, in some cases, distinctive points of entry or exit within, as well as between, each song/dance (and whether the ladies wear pointe shoes); but also providing each dance with something resembling an unstated narrative or fleeting emotional gloss. Indeed, in what I believe was the penultimate song/ dance, the mutual flirting was just south of over-the-top.
Jourdan Epstein and Harrison Coll in Tom Gold’s “Le Voyage”
Photo by Titus Ogilvie-Laing
And the transition from song/dance to song/dance to the next song/dance is seamless. One blends into the next, musically (as performed by Chindamo and the musicians) and choreographically (as performed on stage). That’s a good thing – but it also makes knowing which song is being sung/danced difficult to figure out. So I’m not able here to break down which dancers were executing choreography to which song, only that I found nothing wanting with any member of the engaging ensemble. I did have a favorite dance from among the thirteen (not counting the opening and closing, which involve the entire dancing cast and are as impressive as they should be) – a pas de deux dance of joy or remembered joy. [Perhaps to “Toujours Jamais” (Forever and Ever) from “Les Demoiselles De Rochefort,” but I’m not certain.]
Be that as it may, for Le Voyage, specific details (like those I can’t provide) aren’t really important. What is is being transported to another place and time, and to pleasant memories, real or reconstructed. Not everything in dance, or in the performing arts generally, needs to be serious. As a member of the audience – any audience – sometimes, you just want to sit back and let the springtime ambiance caress your weary eyes like rose-colored glasses, particularly when that ambiance and the relief it provides isn’t available locally. Accordingly, kudos are in order for Gold, the dance’s entire cast for the exceptional, albeit brief, escape – and for sharing the bubbly champagne.
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