From Off-Leash Area co-directors and fellow 2007 Momentum participants, Paul Herwig and Jennifer Ilse, upon viewing opening night of Momentum Weekend ONE-Jones/Bergeron:
JUSTIN JONES
Justin hit us with a kick-ass start, apologies to J Bartlett who was whisked off stage by the energy of the dancers, hyper-kinetic gestural figures wailing arms and feet…..then a substantial amount of drifting in space, pairs, singles, figures in wobbly motion across the grid of space-gravity…and in the end a dynamite portrayal of String Theory’s multidimensionality, with a tall solo dancer in a center spot, his smaller doppelganger downleft who’s shadow looms large above him, whose tripleganger is barely visible behind the Southern’s great archway……I spent a lot of time reading about String Theory when the specials hit PBS a couple of years back, bought a book, and was able to read a page each night over several months - rapt, imaginative, I didn’t know what the hell was going on after page 50! Bring on the chaos and beautiful assimilation of the small and the large - one couldn’t go far enough with a subject like this!
MAGGIE BERGERON & COMPANY
Another powerful start, this time with the simplicity of miniature homes - farmhouse, log cabin, etc. - each with a dancer inside, and then limbs and bodies begin emerging, bursting through plastic and reaching through doorways and breaking through rooftops. This use of the set is a wonderful strength in the show, as each time the dancers re-enter, deconstruct and rebuild the homes, the metaphors are always clear and artfully done. There are other strong moments in the space that is danced in outside of the homes, and they are those joyful moments in dance when the movement just seems to happen, the technical ambitions of creating it are transcended by this thing we call art.