This Valentine’s Day, why not expand your cultural horizons? The Davis Center is putting on “Love, Etcetera,” a stupendous dance show by the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange based on the work of those two classic romantic Wills, Shakespeare and Nelson. A surprising pairing, but as Artistic Director Peter DiMuro explains, “their works are about human foibles, and they’re great storytellers.”
The works of Will and Will are also great opportunities for the company to pursue their idea of “dance as a multi-disciplinary art form that encompasses movement, music, imagery and the spoken word,” as they put it in their promotional material. The two pieces—“Nocturnes” with music by Willie Nelson and “The Farthest Earth From Thee,” based on some of Shakespeare’s sonnets—are not conventional dances. “Earth,” in particular, is a multimedia experience containing both spoken and recorded words, original music by Philip Hamilton, an excerpt from a Jane Smiley novel, videos, bicycles, stairs, ladders, lighting, cabbages and features performers from the company, the community, Georgetown and VSA Arts, a D.C. organization for people with disabilities.
Philippe Bowgen (COL ’08), one of six Georgetown students in the production, said working on the show was a great experience, and “redefines what grace can be … some of the core people [from Dance Exchange] have a different kind of grace than the VSA people, but you would define both as graceful.”
The students (DiMuro refers to them as “you Georgetown people”) also said they benefited from working with the company itself. “They’re a really good bunch of people,” Bowgen said. “Professional, but laid back.”
It’s an apt description: the company creates their “movements” organically and collaboratively. Everyone talks about “movement sequences,” and “adapting to the dancers,” but woolly as it sounds, it works. The dancing on stage feels natural, an extension of the emotions of the songs or words they build off of. “Nocturnes” in particular, created in 1994 by Liz Lerman herself, creates vignettes of each song, about love, humanity and the relationships between people. Every gesture, dress, toe tap is evocative, heartfelt, stunning, leaving you “fulfilled and sad and happy,” as DiMuro put it. Isn’t love swell?
Love, Etcetera is showing Thursday, February 14th through Saturday 16th at 8 PM, in the Gonda Theatre.
