Because of inevitable vicissitudes in funding and audience support, keeping any non-ballet, non-Broadway dance company alive is a prickly challenge in New York, let alone in Denver or other regional cities.
Last year was especially difficult for the Cleo Parker Robinson Dance Ensemble. The company suffered the loss of a longtime revenue source, and its beloved rehearsal director, Marceline Freeman, lost her eyesight. Despite such setbacks, the indomitable Denver-based company is back for its 36th year, beginning its 2006-07 season with “Isis Rising,” an engaging program of works by four female choreographers that continues this weekend at the Newman Center for the Performing Arts.
Year in and year out, Cleo (she is more popularly known in Denver and the dance world by her first name than her last) consistently maintains a vibrant, well-trained group of dancers. This year is no exception.
Despite four new members – Jessi Knight Walker, Marlayna Locklear, Chivas Merchant-Buckman and Riki Wess – and a few minor synchronicity issues during Saturday evening’s opening performance, the 12-member company looks as strong and cohesive as ever.
One of the occasional knocks against the dance ensemble has been a shortage of choreographic meat to go along with the appetizers and desserts on its programs – pieces of complexity and depth the company and audience can really sink their teeth into.
That need is at least partially filled on this latest program with Rosangela Silvestre’s entrancing “Temple in Motion” (2000) – a vaguely ritualistic ensemble work with a primal quality that derives in part from the deliberately pronounced, rhythmic breathing that accompanies much of the dancing.
Although most of the individual movements, from kick splits to flitting arms and hand rubbing, are not especially original or distinctive, Silvestre makes them compelling. She varies tempos and imbues them with a wide diversity of textures and feelings, from purposeful to urgent and even obsessive.
Perhaps more important, she arranges the movements in an involved compositional structure, playing unison moments off non-unison moments and constantly dividing the ensemble into different combinations, such as asymmetrical groups of five, four and three dancers.
Most of the work is devoted to ensemble dancing with little partnering. A notable exception is a trio with a wonderful solo by Vernon Gooden, who works his way along a diagonal with a series of bends and grand, high steps – the rest of the company looking on.
The second half opens with “Salome’s Daughters,” a new restaging of a 1998 work by Nejla Yatkin, showcasing the company’s seven female dancers. In this work, a kind of tale of liberation, the women first appear veiled but later convert the sheer fabric squares from constrictive coverings to streamers in their spirited, fluid dancing.
This piece draws on traditional Middle Eastern dance with its undulating torsos and arms and side-to-side head shifts. In one striking moment, six of the dancers lock their right arms together and their left arms together, forming two parallel lines that then gracefully bend and ripple as one.
Rounding out the program is “Continuum” (2006), an athletic work for the company’s men, and “My Bahia” (2003), a short solo work choreographed and performed by Cleo as a tribute to dance pioneer Katherine Dunham, who died earlier this year.
Fine arts critic Kyle MacMillan can be reached at 303-954-1675 or kmacmillan@denverpost.com.
“Isis Rising”
Cleo Parker Robinson Dance Ensemble|University of Denver, Gates Concert Hall, Newman Center for the Performing Arts, 2344 E. Iliff Ave.; 8 p.m. Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday|$18-$38 | 303-871-7720 or ticketmaster.com.