CounterPULSE Blog

Jess Curtis/Gravity with Maria Scaroni and Croi Glan Integrated Dance Company

Thurs.–Sun. Mar. 27-30, Apr. 3-6, 8pm $18 Thurs. & Sun, $20 Fri. & Sat.

Two naked bodies interact through a highly structured improvisational score. Manipulating our perception, they reveal the body’s awkwardness, its potential failure and finiteness, creating space for the unknown, the wondrous, the infinite. Plus the premiere of a new work for Croi Glan Integrated Dance Company from Cork, Ireland. More Info: www.jesscurtisgravity.org

PREVIEWS

conversation with Jess Curtis
Joe Goode Performance Group Blog, Joe Goode, January 4th, 2008

Excerpt:

JOE: That is the most cogent answer I have received on that topic- thank you!
And are you now finding that you can “engage” a choreographer by challenging him/her on what they did in a given performance? I ask this because it seems like such a deep cultural difference, here in the US we just don’t go up to someone after a program and say- “ I didn’t like this part of what you did.” I think it is a great loss really that we are so well trained to be polite- the opportunity for dialogue, really challenging dialogue about ideas, can get passed over…

Intercontinental Collaborations 3 — The Symmetry Project: Examining connection and separation on the most fundamental levels

San Francisco Bay Guardian, Rita Felciano, March 26, 2008

Excerpt:

Curtis’s latest endeavor, Symmetry Study #7, premiered in Berlin last September. In it, he partners with Maria Francesca Scaroni in a series of improvisational encounters performed in the nude. The idea behind these couplings is to examine connection and separation on the most fundamental level and what they do to our perception of self … It sounds a bit like the Greek concept of the original human who was cut in two and forever tries to reunite with the other half.

REVIEWS

Maximum Exposure in Familiar Territory
Voice of Dance, Allan Ulrich, March 28, 2008

Excerpt:

He [Curtis] and Scaroni flow from one sculptural entanglement to another. At one moment, with limbs clasped, they’re rolling across the space like a wagon wheel. At another, she’s hoisting him on to her back. They split apart and slowly recombine. Her legs encircle his neck, and then, they’re hopping around like frogs chasing a fly. The piece, in three sections, does not lack for variety. In the middle part, the tempo slightly quickens, while the twosome seems to interact with the kaleidoscopically processed images of themselves on video.

Clothing would be a distraction. The nudity is not particularly shocking; the work may be deemed erotic by some observers, but the dancers certainly do little to encourage that response. They’re inclined, instead, to image making: surely, the curved arms and torso alignments that seemed to replicate those statues of the god Shiva are not coincidental. At one moment, with Curtis standing behind Scaroni, she seems to possess both his genitals and her own.

Study In Symmetry
SF Weekly, Bonner Odell, March 26, 2008

Excerpt:

Many have wondered, since the days of the revolutionary postmodern Judson Church movement in 1970s New York, if there is any truly new ground to be broken in the realm of dance and performance. If there is, San Francisco’s Jess Curtis/Gravity may be holding the pickax.