REVIEWS

DANCEVIEWTIMES.com
LaMama : Festival of Dance - May 24th
64 East 4th Street in Manhattan, NY
"Dancing Divas"
new duet by Barbara Mahler

"Male Divas, Female Bonding La MaMa Moves! Dance Festival 2008 ÒDancing DivasÓ choreography by Barbara Mahler, Jodi Melnick, Sara Rudner, Vicky Shick, Sally Silvers, Pam Tanowitz ÒMale BondingÓ choreography by John Scott, John Jasperse, Miguel Gutierrez La MaMa e.t.c., New York May 24, 2008 By Tom Phillips Copyright 2008 by Tom Phillips La MaMa e.t.c. put on a doubleheader of mostly new works and works-inÐprogress at their dance festival Saturday night, but the marquee titles may have been reversed. ÒMale BondingÓ gave us three pieces with dancers mostly obsessing about themselves. On the other hand, six women were billed as the ÒDancing Divas,Ó but their work mostly explored relationships. The best was a double duet by Pam Tanowitz that explored both the mechanics and the psychology of partnering. "....
Read the full review here:
http://www.danceviewtimes.com/2008/05/male-divas-fema.htm

OFF OFF OFF.com
Women's Night: Soaking Wet Festival Features 6
by Clare Byrne


photos: c.2008 Julie Lemberger

SOAKING WET
Choreography by: Janet Charleston, Patricia Beaman, Barbara Mahler, Kate Digby, Molly Rabinowitz, Keely Garfield. Produced by: David Parker and Jeffrey Kazin. Dancers: Janet Charleston, Patricia Beaman, Barbara Mahler, Rachel Thorne Germond, Kate Digby, Molly Rabinowitz, Erin Reck, Keely Garfield, Omagbitse Omagbemi, Brandin Steffensen, Jonathan Belcher. Lighting design by: Jonathan Belcher.

SCHEDULE : Soaking WET Festival West End Theater March 6-9, 2008

excerpt:

"I enter the West End Theater for Soaking WET, a dance series presented by David Parker and Jeffrey Kazin and wonder, what is this space? As audience, we sit facing a semi-circular stage; huge velvet-draped windows rise above. I feel like I'm at the Globe Theater, and those drapes hide balconies of ghostly audience-members Ñ which would mean we're the ones being watched. In the first show of the double bill, I watch five gifted female choreographers dance solos or duets: a glimpse into each of their lives, perspectives, relationships. At the end I think, what is this show for? The answer seems to be, to give performers an opportunity to perform. What are the performers performing? They are doing what they are compelled to do, for which they need space and a show: the act that gets them to the other side of whatever gully they have encountered physically, mentally, or emotionally.

Rites of passage are what we as audience bear witness to. That's the thing: often we come to the performance thinking we should be given something Ñ when really, we've been called to contribute presence and energy to complete the happening. We are needed. It's not a job for the unfocused or resistant. But like gods and fertile females, we must be courted. There must be sparkles Ñ or something Ñ to catch our eyes, hearts, groins. One more question: are the most necessary exchanges going to happen within theaters these days? My fantasy is that all such "opportunities" would vanish, disappear. Then I want to see where and how our necessary performances get done........

....In "Wallflower" by Barbara Mahler, the choreographer starts against the back wall in jeans, glitter earrings in her ear. She's lean, mature, with a short salt-and-pepper haircut. She tries out shapes against the back wall efficiently. In walks Rachel Thorne Germonde, a tall soft dancer. She curves, Barbara angles; they move without creating meaning. Then Rachel hooks Barbara's elbows into a hold against her chest Ñ they are chest to chest, face to face Ñ and lowers Barbara to the floor, open and exposed, in a significant action. As they continue a duet, Barbara's role reminds me of a Balanchine ballerina: the story is about her as she is pretzeled and promenaded. As the piece ends, Barbara gains ground, and becomes both story and teller."

read the full review here: http://www.offoffoff.com/dance/2008/soakingwet.php

_______________________________________________________________________________

 

_______________________________________________________________________________

 

TRANSFER

Reviewed by Kathleen Duffy

Presented at Link’s Hall, 3435 N. Sheffield, Chicago IL, Nov. 7-9, 2003

Transfer , by Barbara Mahler and Rachel Thorne Germond , examines instances of transmission: a partnership visibly fluctuates between harmony and dissonance, emotional strength transforms into physical strength, grief transposes from a private to a public process, external chaos shifts to inner peace, and assumptions about a pop culture icon are reassigned as facts about a fellow human being. Overlaying all these is the longstanding mentor/mentee relationship between Mahler and Germond, in which the transfer of aesthetic and tradition from teacher to student is highly visible without appearing derivative. The structure of the program at Link’s Hall enhanced this visibility, as Germond and Mahler alternated presentation of their works, allowing for a more comparative view between them.

Rejoinder, Germond’s duet with Asimina Chremos, focuses on the varying levels of commitment within a partnership, and the emotional reactions those fluctuations elicit. As the piece begins, the performers dance together, their physical movements infused with a playful innocence and childlike grace. There is a hint of sexual tension between the pair, but the principal impression is one of a pure and loving relationship. Then, the music dissolves into dissonance, the dancers begin to dance alone, and their individual gestures evoke the pain of their separation. In a moment of reconciliation, the two partners balance one another in turn, a vivid metaphor for their mutual support of one another . To the melody of a delicate Bellini aria, the two partners begin to come together again, and their dance reveals stability and togetherness as the crux of their relationship.

Mahler starts her program with The Whispering Pages – short dances in white all in a row. Mahler dances as if she is trying to touch her body to every inch of the space around her. The sequences of movement deliberately draw attention to her feet, her legs, her arms, her spine, as if she is discovering her body and its immense strength for the first time. Her dance is a delicate rhythm familiar from most of our lives – moments of supreme wonder alternate with moments of supreme despair, and during the times between the two, only a simple desire for balance.

During rests in the music, Mahler allows her breath to become an audible element of the dance as well. The sound reminds us that her refined grace is the result of astounding physical ability and muscular control. Her choreography incorporates many movements reminiscent of yoga, where the premise is to breathe into the position, allowing the breath to move energy inside and take the body further into a pose. This is unsurprising, as Mahler is a master teacher of the Klein Technique, which utilizes breathing techniques and energy work as parts of its methodology.

Shudder, a solo by Germond, enacts a reaction to catastrophic loss. In four movements, Germond illustrates an organic grief process, growing from private to public expression. Germond’s choreography of this piece calls to mind the vast effort necessary to maintain emotional balance and composure when faced with trauma. She often bends over and holds her stomach, shaking from side to side as if in severe pain. Her leg quakes uncontrollably, and she looks at it as if she cannot fathom what is happening. Memory repeatedly exerts its strength on her, pulling her into the past despite her best efforts to remain in the present. She ends the piece by becoming supine on the floor, curled around an oil lamp and blowing out the light, effectively ending her permission for us to witness this intense, personal course of grief.

The accompaniment to Mahler’s Untitled Solo is an aural transfer of sound from Germond’s Rejoinder to this piece. The same dissonant noise that signals strife in Rejoinder now becomes the manic and sometimes crushing energy of the urban environment in Mahler’s solo, which is powerful enough to bring her down to the floor. Perhaps in psychic defense, her arms begin to create long arcs in the space around her, as if she is sweeping away the external clutter in her determination to find repose. She is moving and being moved by the energy of the outside world, yet her absolute will to maintain control of herself is obvious throughout the piece.

Practitioners of yoga will understand the enormous physical strength Mahler possesses when she dances into her elegant poses of balance, as well. She does not shake, she does not wobble at all - she is almost otherworldly in her ability to find a solid place of balance in the space of a single heartbeat. The dance ends with an expression of contentment, and the sense that the chaos of the outer world has definitely been conquered by her serenity and inner peace.


______________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Along Those Lines:

Reviewed by Lisa Jo Sagolla

Self-presented at Joyce SoHO, 155 Mercer St., NTC, Oct. 13-15, 2003

Dancer-choreographer Barbara Mahler is a paradigm of perfect biomechanics. Performing three of her solo works, at Joyce SoHO, she shows us how the human body is naturally meant to move.

In her first offering, " Walking the Path of the Moon ," Mahler glides and rolls across the floor with amazing liquidity, propelled by the stunning arcs carved by her legs as they lift and circle, with luscious ease, within her hip sockets. The brief phrases of curving movements are arrested by calm, geometric shapes, in which Mahler's body seems to breathe, collect its thoughts, and groove into a lulling, natural rhythm. There's never a stress, strain, or unnecessary tension. Every iota of energy Mahler manufactures is perfectly directed and apportioned in just the right dosage to accomplish the required action. It's the complete lack of kinesthetic verbiage that makes Mahler's dancing utterly perspicuous.

In " With Windows Opened Wide ," she shifts her choreographic focus to smaller, more intimate investigations of her physicality. She undulates her thoracic spine with intriguing dexterity, spins tiny pirouettes, and balances on one leg with amazing stability; one cannot detect even the slightest wobble in her ankle -- the joint is absolutely quiet, her placement impeccable.

Though everything is so beautifully correct in Mahler's motions, her choreography never feels calculated or predictable. We have no idea where she will go next, but we watch with both eagerness and comfort -- extremely curious to see what new kinetic terrain her body will explore, yet confident she'll negotiate the journey with ease.

Mahler closed her program with "The Bow," her newest solo, and proved that she is truly incapable of boring an audience. Though all her dances are quite similar stylistically and choreographically -- phrases from one piece could almost be interchanged with those from another -- simply watching her body in motion ensures divine aesthetic adventure.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Leaving The Wind To Howl

Reviewed by Michael Rutherford

Choreographer, interpreter and professor, Barbara Mahler offers for her second time in the Tangent space, Leaving The Wind To Howl, a work that explores the stakes of physical equilibrium and imbalance. Divided into five movements, this solo brings a strong emotional resonance accentuated by gesture that is at once strongly expressive and minimalist. Each section was created independently and in a different order than the one shown. This is astonishing, considering how remarkable the fluidity and the relationship between each of the sections are.

From the first movement, Waiting , minimalist to the extreme, there comes forth a melancholy like that of a rainy day, as one watches it flowing out through a window. It is not without reason that the work of Barbara Mahler has been compared to Japanese haiku, for its precision and starkness, its movement reduction. Going That Way , the second movement, explodes with a silent and contained energy, accentuated by the absence of music, and then surrenders the whole space to a moment of dance of great purity. At The Door , a shared sequence of movements and pauses, subtly harmonizes itself with an excerpt of Franz Schubert's Death and the Maiden, to which Mahler is dancing. With the fourth movement, entitled With Windows Openend Wide, the choreographer took flight, leaving the audience with a real feeling of gliding, then falling. I had a pleasant surprise when I learned of a solo created by Mahler in 1996 entitled "All Manner of Falling, " which was an exploration of the physical and emotional impact of falling. Coda - One Last Dance , the shortest movement, danced to an excerpt from Winterreise by Schubert and sung by Thomas Hampson, closed this beatiful moment of dance with the sweetness of a kiss of springtime in all subtly.

Barbara Mahler offers us Leaving The Wind To Howl, a beautiful moment of dance, finely structured, lucid, with a formal rigor and an astonishing expressive force. Her dancing, on the one hand athletic was, on the other, none the less of a delicate virtuosity and with a captivating and evocative power.