Choreography by Tedd Robinson and James Kudelka
A Moonhorse Dance Theatre Presentation
at the Young Centre for the Performing Arts
November 23-December 5, 2009

   Claudia Moore remains a remarkable dancer who is capable of the most expressive movement that resonates with nuances of emotion. She shines in the two specially commissioned chamber-size pieces: Tedd Robinson’s fifteen-minute Lone Some and James Kudelka’s thirty-minute duet Half an Hour of Our Time. The Robinson is performed by Moore in partnership with Dan Wild (another strong, mature, eloquently expressive dancer) to the vocals of Cindi Lauper (doing a Smokey Robinson number) and Rickie Lee Jones (rendering a Paul McCartney tune), and it easily transcends its rather contrived title by being a dance about a broken-hearted woman. Wild has only a brief appearance in this piece, serving a situational function to establish the man’s hold on the woman. She begins as a twitchy, uneasy victim, trying hard to restore a sense of equilibrium, though she knows that she cannot deny her need for him. Theirs has been a love that should have lasted years, but has not. Moore’s wonderfully expressive face and long, bony arms and feet translate her sense of whimsy, and the dance becomes the movement equivalent of a soliloquy, with her movement vocabulary extending from small finger walks to much larger sweeps of arms and feet.

   Kudelka, who was Moore’s fellow student at the National Ballet School many years ago, explores an intricate relationship between a man and woman in Half an Hour of Our Time—a duet that lasts half an hour. The work is performed in total silence, but the wordlessness works in the dancers’ favour, shifting the emphasis from text or music to the eloquence of the human body in its various semaphores, particularities of gesture, stark or subtle evocations of emotion. The silence intensifies the dancers’ intimacy. A living-room dance, in which the couple actually essays ballroom choreography at moments without breaking the tone and patterns of modern interpretive dance, this piece is fascinatingly charged, its repetitiveness illuminating the poles of feeling of two people who could be performing a memory dance as they re-live their life together even as that life is under immense strain of fission. Tableaux are the launching pad, and as the pair take different positions, facing or turning away from each other, the brief moments are like snapshots or stills from a private dream or remembrance. Rhythm and velocity change, as Moore rocks, sways, gets locked into or breaks free of Wild’s strong masculine hold. Their overt dynamic is one of subjugation and dominance, as she demonstrates exhaustion or fatigue while he manipulates or revives her in what is quite a savage manner. Inspired by Jean Cocteau’s La Voix Humaine, a one-act opera with text, Kudelka creates a thrilling psycho-dramatic dance where a break-up is executed with charged precision. Moore and Wild are perfect foils for each other, and their alternating physical rhythms speak louder than words and with a special clarity, free of the pretentious, portentous quotient of so much modern dance where the concept often overtakes the choreography. Kudelka never blurs the lines, tempi, or intensities, and his dancers incarnate his vision with a special blend of emotional and muscle memory. 

photos: Julia Gotz

pic 1; Claudia Moore in "Lone Some"

pic 2: Claudia Moore and Dan Wild in "Half an Hour of Our Time"



Go Back to: Dance Reviews