Ellen Sinopoli Dance Company: “Synesthesia” @ Troy Savings Bank Music Hall, 5/4/13
by Tresca Weinstein
TROY – Ellen Sinopoli’s “Synesthesia,” onstage at the Troy Savings Bank Music Hall Saturday evening, brought together six dancers, five paintings and four musicians in a glorious explosion of movement, sound and color.
The multilayered collaboration matched five of Sinopoli’s dances with five vibrant abstract paintings by Willie Marlowe, which were reproduced in the program and also shared via Twitter (this was the rare performance in which viewers were invited to keep their smartphones on). Live music by violinist Cornelius Dufallo, percussionist Brian Melick, flamenco guitarist Maria Zemantauski and cellist Monica Wilson-Roach amped up the volume another level, literally and metaphorically.
The two longer works on the program were particularly successful in conjuring up vivid worlds and taking the audience along on the journey. “A Gathering in Red, Departing” swirled through changing moods and tones in tandem with a thrilling score for electric violin that Dufallo both mixed and played live.
Long warbling passages segued into sections full of longing and languor, as the dancers (company members Melissa George, Sara Senecal, Laura Teeter and André Robles and guest artist Jennifer Yackel) projected a poignant sense of community and interrelationships. They made sculptural shapes, circled round each other and dropped to their knees in unison, letting their arms do the dancing and eventually lead them to their feet, where they plunged again into Dufallo’s turbulent sea of sound.
With “Compas,” accompanied with spirit and passion by Melick, Wilson-Roach and Zemantauski, Sinopoli takes the firepower of flamenco and translates it into her own fluid style. The piece begins with rolling hips and high kicks, and segues into sections of deliberate, dramatic movement, including a duet highlighting Senecal and Marie Klaiber. Kim Vanyo’s costumes, black with graphic elements in purple, echoed the energy and hues in Marlowe’s painting “Dark Sky.”
Marlowe’s “Lava Flow” and Vanyo’s orange and red costumes were also spot-on complements for “Falling,” the evening’s opening work. Melick’s rhythms and Zemantauski’s melodies set the pace for intricate choreography that clusters the dancers together and then sends them ricocheting out into space. Faster sections are interspersed with slower, fluid sequences of stretching and curving.
The program also included two solos: “The Walk,” with George whirling, leaping and gliding to Dufallo’s accompaniment, and “Zarmina,” named for a martyred Afghan poet. With quick, startled movements and extreme extensions, Teeter artfully conveyed a sense of oppression and urgency.
Tresca Weinstein is a frequent contributor to the Times Union.
ELLEN SINOPOLI DANCE COMPANY: “SYNESTHESIA”
Where: Troy Savings Bank Music Hall, 30 Second St., Troy
When: 8 p.m. Saturday
Length: 1 hour and 45 minutes, one intermission
Program: “Falling,” “The Walk,” “A Gathering in Red, Departing,” “Zarmina,” “Compas”