RALPH LEMON COMPANY
Two and a half years ago, at the old MoMing Dance & Arts Center, Lemon’s company performed a piece, Sleep, that had an excruciating effect on me (and others I’ve talked to): I had never seen before, and never expect to see again, a work so moving on the subject of death. Looking back I can see that certain elements of the dance–the Faure Requiem score, false endings that prolonged the climax, biblical images, Lemon’s very refusal to acknowledge emotion–helped him produce the effect he did.
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Certain themes and ways of working remain, however. The fourth work on this program, the 1991 Solo, seems something of a departure, but like the second dance on the MoMing program, Happy Trails, it attacks a stereotype. The other three dances here resemble Sleep in some ways: they repeat its prayerful images, its sense of a community that matter-of-factly witnesses and cares for its members, and the evident wish to fly, which stands in for a kind of spiritual striving.
Phrases Almost Biblical (1992), which uses no music at all, takes Lemon’s obsession with flying to an extreme; and to achieve the effects he wants he’s devised a new way of moving. If Martha Graham’s discovery was the contraction, if Doris Humphrey’s was fall and recovery, Lemon’s is the winding up and unwinding of a spring. Relying to a great extent on torque–on a twisting gathering of forces and subsequent whirling extension of the limbs–this technique produces a horizontal movement whose flung lines extend to every corner of the stage. The strength and flexibility of the dancer’s back are crucial, because ultimately this movement comes from the big muscles crisscrossing the back; you don’t have the sense, as you do in so much dance, that the movement is coming from the groin and involving mostly the legs.
Lemon couldn’t have done it without his six breathtaking performers, each of whom has a distinct movement voice. Wally Cardona, the exemplar of Lemon’s style, is a miracle of acrobatic grace, and when he’s paired with the similarly powerful Michael Nolan, as he often is, the two establish a strong but subtle link. Nancy Ohrenstein, who’s been with Lemon for six seasons, has a restrained soulfulness; Ted Marks is a thoughtful, unassuming presence; Lisa Powers, sturdy and pliant, is capable of incredible strength and abandon; and Alissa Hsu etches the details of her exquisite dancing so carefully they almost belie her force and range.
