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Marcus Jarrell Willis wants us to rewind. Back to the good old days. The Phoenix Dance Theatre director has made a new piece, Suite Release, with fellow choreographer (and fellow Alvin Ailey alumni) Yusha-Marie Sorzano that’s an ode to the pure goodness of the dancefloor, filtered through memories of 1990s hip-hop culture. Here’s the voice of DJ Kool Herc, godfather of hip-hop. And here’s a clan of friends, hanging out and vibing on the kind of connection you can only get by dancing together. The sound of Labrinth singing the hymn How Great Thou Art sets out the almost spiritual nature of the exercise, then they bust through Buju Banton, A Tribe Called Quest and the theme from TV show A Different World, with all the loose energy of the dancefloor (plus the guiding hand of a director) drawing on hip-hop, house and dancehall. Modernity intrudes to complicate matters, but the message is clear: can we get back to how it was?
From the more recent past, this nicely chosen mixed bill features two short revivals: Jarrell Willis’s Next of Kin, from 2013, which has playful antics in a sibling-like duet; then Ed Myhill’s Why Are People Clapping? from 2018, a very enjoyable 13 minutes, based on Steve Reich’s Clapping Music, that cleverly visualises rhythm with levity and glee.
There’s also a new piece from hotly tipped choreographic duo Travis Clausen-Knight and James Pett (now known as PCK Dance) although it’s one that in its own way feels strangely retro. It’s a lot to do with the music – that stuff is all-powerful. In the duet Small Talk we have a troubled couple and the outline of a domestic space: lamp, chair, rug. It has a great opening, dancer Tony Polo on the rug as if stranded on an island; darkness slowly lifts as Schubert swells. Chopin comes next, and there are riches in a soundtrack that mines the greats of classical music. It can colour the gaps in the setting and in the characters’ inner lives. But then a (recorded) piano strikes up the first notes of Arvo Pärt’s Spiegel im Spiegel, the most overused of all music in contemporary dance, and it’s like being transported back to the early 2000s (the piece was composed in 1978 but its ubiquity in dance came later).
The choreography of this stubborn, occasionally comedic, couple, has hints of Jiří Kylián and Mats Ek – greats at their peak a few decades ago – in the starched-straight limbs and mannered gestures, especially in the female role (danced by Dorna Ashory). Polo gets much more interesting moves, his rangy frame more elastic as he leaps in a crab-like pose, his energy fraught. Even his costume is better, his oversized suit looking very cool, while Ashory gets a boring plain dress. But Gen Z is all about millennium-era nostalgia at the moment, so maybe this is totally in keeping, and actually very up to date. Not so much about rewind as culture’s inevitable cycles.
