At the 92nd Street YMHA, the air was welcoming, even communal, an environment where poets and weightlifters share space amid the world-famous Jewish institution. On October 17th an enthusiastic audience gathered in from the chill fall winds, warmed up and revivified by a multigenerational creativity spanning various cultural and artistic traditions. Voices of Bulgaria and America could not have been a more ideal exhibition.
Contemplative, refined, and raw,
Kathryn Posin devised Voices of Bulgaria and America in memory of her father. She introduced his story briefly to the audience, leaving everyone to enjoy the narrative as told through her choreographic genius. He fled his native Russian Turkestan through Mongolia and China as a forced migrant in the wake of the Russian Revolution, and later found refuge in San Francisco.
Bridge of Song began with folkloric costumes originally designed for the American Ballet for Bulgaria project by Hristiana Mihaleva, projecting the worldly traditions of a homeland. Dancers moved through the aesthetics of flight. Motivy then had the dancer transfixed, swaying to movements guided by the center stage double bassist. Towards the exhilaration of escape, the music of Century Rolls by
John Adams enveloped the sensual confinements in a wild freedom.
In You Are (Wherever Your Thoughts Are), named after the composition by Steve Reich, three female dancers portrayed movements to echo nostalgia, loss and regret, while the male dancer exhibited the grayscale shadows of memory. Fly, Fly My Sadness showed a marvelously clever juxtaposition of the exotic. Buried Cities, the final piece, achieved a waking emanation of cultural recovery and preservation as contrasted by foreign assimilation and nihilism. The Thracian Sofia herself is the final image of the performance, the Goddess of Wisdom in flight unearthed from the pangs of hope.
Photo Credit: Lois Greenfield
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