Christopher K. Morgan Makes Strong Malashock Dance Debut

The program offered a first look at dances made for Malashock Dance by its new artistic director, Christopher K. Morgan. Good news: Morgan’s work has the kind of complex engagement with ideas we’ve enjoyed from John Malashock for 35+ years. There’s also an appealing playfulness, as well as a democratic approach to composition that may be a mixed blessing.

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Strong Malashock Show Features Possible Successor

To a Michael Wall score that mixes crowd noises, breaking glass, and what sounds unnervingly like gunshots, five dancers advance warily, arms raised as if to ward off an attack. … The society Griffin creates onstage feels dangerous … and like an apt reflection of the present moment, in which the show took place outdoors on a chilly evening since we’re not yet done with COVID; and with a flag directly behind center-stage flying at half-staff in honor of the country’s latest mass shootings.

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Dance Bonanza from Litvak, Malashock

We’re vaccinated. We’re masked. And we’re returning to theaters to see dance! Last week, I got to shows by two companies, Litvak Dance and Malashock Dance. Both featured work by multiple choreographers, making it a dance bonanza.

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Malashock, Griffin Choreograph Hope

Two “tribes”—one dressed in brown, the other in green—exchange wary glances. Using wooden cubes, they stake out their territory and line up, facing off.  Yet, a moment later, a man ventures out from the four-person greens, a woman from the browns. To music with a waltz tempo, they explore lyrical partnering.

How do we respond to someone we perceive as “other?” With curiosity or fear?

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Half a Great Show: Malashock Dance’s “Without a Net” at WOW

Though the circus artists mostly occupied center-stage in “Without a Net,” the dance smartly complemented them, setting an edgy European-circus mood. I was primed to see something weirder at the midpoint in the 80-minute program, when my half of the audience switched places with folks who’d been at the “Side Show.” Weird, it was.

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