HQ Review: The Big Muddy Dance Company’s “Awakening” (Program A)

On November 2 and continuing through November 5, The Big Muddy Dance Company delighted audiences at its fall concert, Awakening, at the Catherine B. Berges Theatre at Center of Creative Arts.  Awakening featured Program A on November 2 and 3, and Program B for both the matinee and the evening performances on November 4.  This is a review for Program A, which included two pieces that premiered in The Big Muddy’s spring performance last May and a new premiere that evening.

Program A began with “In the Cedars,” a collaborative piece choreographed by Elizabeth Corbett and the dancers.  The dancers’ task for this piece was to answer the question, “What moves me?”.  Blue lighting flooded the empty stage that unapologetically displayed the black upstage brick wall and backstage wings, all fully exposed by the lack of scrim and curtains.  The sound of crashing ocean waves and spoken words of the dancers recorded for this piece that answered the above question beckoned the dancers to enter the stage one at a time, their unique movements at varying levels slow and deliberate.  As the ocean waves faded out and the music faded in, the dancers’ voices still told their stories intermittently as they performed the piece.  The choreography’s free flowing movement matched the organic conversation style of the dancers’ stories that they told which included breathtaking partner work, sweeping upper body curves, rond de jambe turns, synchronized penchés and reversés, and effortless sautés.  The changing music set the moods reflected throughout the piece and included a slow calmness, a longing nostalgia, and lively joy.  “In the Cedars” gave the audience a glimpse into the person behind each of the dancers onstage, as well as related to the similarities they shared in their life stories.

“Vanity Fare,” choreographed by Marcus Jarrell Willis, began on a dark stage, with the exception of dim lighting cast upon a row of five dancers upstage, each posing as mannequins on their own black boxes and dressed in black pants and solid colored shirts.  A young woman entered the stage and admired the mannequins, clearly longing for something that she lacked in her life that she believed that the mannequins displayed.  The dancers slowly promenaded on their individual boxes and eventually danced their own solos off of their boxes as upbeat solo string, piano, and guitar music played.  The dancers’ movement was fast-paced yet fluid.  The story then segued into the young woman dancing with a man dressed in cool silver pants and a black shirt, to Baz Luhrmann’s spoken word poem, “Everybody’s Free (to Wear Sunscreen).”  Through lighthearted body language, clear facial expressions, and sharp dance movements that utilized his whole body and matched the upbeat rhythm and accents of the rap-like words, the man imparted his words of wisdom with both humor and serious intentionality, and the young woman’s movements, facial expressions, and body language reciprocated, as if they both were having a conversation with each other that the audience could clearly understand.  After the man dressed in silver left, the young woman danced a duet with an outcast mannequin to solo guitar music before the piece concluded with all of the dancers in the piece performing synchronized choreography together.

Artistic Director Kirven Douthit-Boyd choreographed the third and final piece of the evening, “Something About a Dream.”  The heavily-influenced jazz piece—for both the music and the style of dance—began with tranquil blue lighting on the scrim while two dancers dressed in teal suits danced together behind it as percussion music played.  A solo trumpet dominated the score as the scrim lifted up and the full company of dancers eventually entered the stage, and the lively music continued with a drumroll and strong brass section.  The lights dimmed briefly and the dancers’ silhouettes sharply contrasted against the upstage lighting.  The piece quickly built to be physically active and fast-moving, featuring many turns, quick footwork, explosive leaps and jumps timed to musical bursts, and effortless lifts.  The choreography brought attention to every dynamic and layer in the music and featured sections of the full company of dancers wearing different colored suits, as well as solo moments.  This world premiere of Something About a Dream was a rousing celebration of jazz music and the dancers who embodied its sound.

Thursday’s performance of Awakening gave the audience an entertaining mix of both well-loved pieces and a new piece that appealed to a variety of tastes in dance.  The evening highlighted both the dancers as individuals and the dance company as a whole and celebrated the start of their 2023-2024 season.