Arizona Dance Festival: Representing the Best in Arizona Dance?

Don’t get me wrong here. I know Arizona is full of intelligent and talented dancers. Unfortunately, this past weekend on September 14^th and 15^th, the audience at the Arizona Dance Festival, presented at Scottsdale Center for the Performing Arts, did not get a healthy dose of Arizona’s incredible dance capabilities. Instead, viewers experienced thirteen different company’s/solo artists that presented a very mediocre representation of what dance is in Arizona, with the exception of a few that delivered a phenomenal dance package.
Each night was a different program, allowing more dance artists to present their work, which is an excellent idea in theory. After watching the work presented, it is clear this show could have been the same program two nights in a row, and then this review would have contained an entirely different vocabulary.
CONDER/dance, founded by Carley Conder in 2003, is an excellent example of intelligent and talented dancers in Arizona. Performing “The Weight of Light,” choreographed by ASU dance professor Mary Fitzgerald in collaboration with Natalia Jaeger for video imagery, these dancers demonstrated their more than adequate ability to portray challenging movement and topics flawlessly. This highly physical piece never lost the energy it deserved. All eight dancers (including Conder herself) infected the audience with a strong presence and conviction for the piece.
Other strong work between the two nights included Karen Schupp’s intense solo “Response,” Eva Fleming’s highly entertaining “Rags Ava,” The Visionary Dance Company’s beautiful “Transending Reality,” and the seamless partnering in Cultivating Flight’s “Mars 4.2.” Each of these pieces provided a consistently solid performance presence, as well as interesting or entertaining choreography that captivated the viewers.
While there were five impressive pieces presented in the festival, the other work lacked the caliber of professionalism shown in aforementioned five pieces. Desert Dance Theatre, a company founded in the valley in 1979, performed two pieces, both a disappointment, but for two very different reasons. The dancers in “Last Supper at Sad Café” demonstrated the ability to successfully embody the character of psycho-killer waitresses, but unfortunately the choreography was bland for a comedic piece. On the other hand “The Butterfly Effect” was a highly intricate and physical piece that demanded an immense amount of energy. Regrettably, the dancers were incapable of producing the adequate amount of energy the movement and music called for.
Movement Source Dance Company, SHOK, A-WOL Dance Collective, and Dulce Dance Company all gave mediocre performances as well. Movement Source was over-powered by the live musical talent of Kristopher Hill, who impressively plays multiple instruments at once. Due to his exciting musical performance and the company’s lack of energy or interesting choreography, it was difficult to watch the dancers as opposed to the musician. SHOK, a hip hop group, had trouble maintaining their unison, a couple dancers did not know the choreography, and the dance ended very abruptly. The aerial work in A-WOL Dance Collective’s piece was impressive, but there was no connection between the dancers, music, and choreography. Dulce Dance Company showed Lilian Gomez and George Johnson are very dedicated performers, but the dance itself was over the top and cheesy for a dramatic topic.
Overall, the Arizona Dance Festival revealed there is potential to put together a remarkable program, but this collection of dances for the 2007 show just missed the mark of displaying amazing rather than mundane dance in Arizona.