Editor’s note: For Dallas Arts Month in April, this is one of a series of stories from The Dallas Morning News examining how North Texas artists and arts groups are coping and moving forward one year after the start of the pandemic.
— To see more from our Art and the City 2021 collection, click/tap here.
The lights seemed to shine a little brighter, the movement of the dancers more compelling to the senses. It had been almost half a year since I’d seen a live show at Annette Strauss Square, the normally 2,000-capacity outdoor venue of the AT&T Performing Arts Center.
Why is this beautiful setting of a long lawn and high, state-of-the-art stage, nestled between Winspear Opera House and Meyerson Symphony Center and looking up at a couple of downtown skyscrapers, used so infrequently for dance concerts?
That’s the question that came to mind as Avant Chamber Ballet, Bruce Wood Dance and Dallas Black Dance Theatre lit up Strauss Square for “Together We Dance,” last weekend’s brainchild of ACB artistic director Katie Puder that drew a few hundred art-starved souls.
Maybe it takes a pandemic to realize how great it is to sit outside on a lovely spring evening and watch three of the city’s top dance troupes give us back some of what we’ve been denied.
At the second of two shows, ACB was accompanied by the Cézanne Quartet on a trio of works choreographed by Puder. The first and best, The Seasons, was animated by the famous Vivaldi music played with subtle vigor by the quartet, which was seated inconspicuously in the back left corner of the stage.
The 12 dancers, rarely out there together at the same time, started in modern pink bodysuits and short, pleated skirts, then changed into pale blue outfits to mark the first seasonal shift. The movement was flowing, interspersed with turns, spins and hops on pointe.
In this piece and throughout the evening, ACB showed off Puder’s gift for carefully arranged, ever evolving formations of eye-pleasing symmetry.
Opening with the dancers in silhouette, Sisterhood brought a more playful, sprightly mood. Colorful costumes of tights and cropped T-shirts matching light-as-air choreography made the whole enterprise look effortless.
The show-closing Schema was a bit of a departure, the goofily arty outfits brought to the fore by a slowed-down, deliberate movement style reminiscent of avant-garde choreographer Merce Cunningham’s deconstructions of ballet.
In between the Puder pieces, Bruce Wood Dance and Dallas Black Dance Theatre brought their own sensibilities to the show.
Wood’s Hide Me Angel, a duet for two shirtless men in long, sack-like skirts, was the evening’s most intimate work. Elliott Trahan and Cole Vernon spent most of the time in close proximity, lifting and nuzzling one another to the building score of Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring.
DBDT’s Execution of a Sentiment was the most contemporary-looking piece on the bill. Muscular and urgent, it featured a lot of floor work, including gymnastic falls and slides.
All three groups on the program have been making virtual shows since the pandemic shut down live performances a little over a year ago. ACB opened its season in early November at Strauss Square. “Together We Dance” marked an inching back to a new normal that perhaps will feature more outdoor shows.
There are signs. Several performances are scheduled for Strauss Square in the coming months, starting with two multi-act shows of local talent: “Dance Planet 24” on April 10 and “Changing Perspectives” on April 16, the latter including music and theater acts as well.
Then there’s Dallas Theater Center, which is about to close Something Grim(m), a fairy tale that plays out through a series of installations outside the Performing Arts Center’s Wyly Theatre. Of course, no live actors are involved.
Meanwhile, Echo Theatre is celebrating its 23rd anniversary all month with Saturday-night screenings of a filmed play, The Other Felix, on the newly renovated patio at the Bath House Cultural Center on White Rock Lake.
With these advances, it might not be long now before the Dallas performing arts scene again resembles an approximation of its well-earned place in the pre-pandemic world.
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