Dance review: LEVYdance at Henry Fonda Theater
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Los Angeles had its first look at LEVYdance, a strong emerging modern dance group from San Francisco that performed Wednesday night at the Henry Fonda Theater. The 7-year-old company, headed by the gifted 28-year-old choreographer Benjamin Levy, has been garnering steady praise in the Bay Area and lately has toured the East Coast and Europe.
From the look of his easy choreographic touch, Levy seems to have been born to dance. He’s clearly capable of coherent 10- to-15 minute choreographic expressions -- but he and his company are still a work in progress. (Also problematic was the Fonda Theater, where problems with lighting and seating marred the evening.)
The predominantly Iranian American audience warmly greeted Levy, for he is a hometown guy. He grew up on the Westside as the first-gen son of immigrant parents, graduating from Beverly Hills High School. After a stint with Joe Goode Performance Group, Levy started his own company in 2002. L.A. had one previous glimpse of the ensemble when it participated in the Philharmonic’s Minimalist Jukebox festival in 2006.
The loveliest dance was the first, “Physics.” Set to a percolating electronic score, the dancers, dressed in flattering brown garb, explore themes of body weight distribution. Sounds pretty scientific, but Levy has a confident and lush way of shaping bodies in space; there are full, crescent-moon, pleasing curves that reach from tip of head to toe. But the dance itself needs shaping; it’s monotone and doesn’t really develop.
“Wake” is a dance-duet performed in smart gray trousers and turtle-neck tops. Initially set to piano arpeggios, the score morphs interestingly into spoken word, “I’m not sure. I can’t remember the name,” the words say, and the female dancer begins to vibrate.
Levy likes duets with couples facing each other, intimately, then touching and pulling each other’s head. It’s uncomfortable, but it may be cultural — reference the traditional Iranian greeting of two-cheeked kisses (men included).
In “Cirrus,” the troupe is dressed in white -- suggesting angels, then sickly hospital patients. Dancers engage Levy’s familiar motifs: backbone as wavy-spine, stuck-out derriere, light karate chop to the chest, dancers fully inverted onto their heads (he should lose this movement), dancers pulled by the chin. “Cirrus” suffers from too much noodling. It feels like studio improvisation.
The program closed with “Nu Nu,” a romp on disco versus theatrical dance, a theme that may speak more to dancers than to audiences.
Levy’s handsome company of five performed well. Two of the women excel: company veteran Brooke Gessay and a recent addition, Lily Dwyer, a blond with a cool haircut and legs that don’t end.
-- Debra Levine