I went with some friends to see the citydance performance this weekend. it was interesting. sarah kaufman reviewed it in today’s post, here. there are many points to her review that i completely disagreed with–completely! but the one thing she did get right was that it was great to go see a sold out show of local, professional dance smack downtown in a beautiful theatre filled with nice-looking, cultured folks who weren’t all over 60. it felt like a night out, not to the hinderlands of brookland or bethesda but one of the areas in dc that i like the best. And at first, i was very impressed with the show. the first piece was boring but solidly performed, the second and third were interesting and appealing, and the fourth was, again, professional, though not inspiring. the performance quality of all of them felt quite high, at least for dc. But the 2nd half was a complete departure from that. a couple of the pieces were virtual disasters, one was way overdone, and only one–a doug varone piece–had some nuance to it. it was really an unfortunate arrangement of the evening’s pieces; my friends and i went from feeling optimistic and interested in the company to, by the end, being a little bit embarassed.

that said, there are some great dancers in the company. in particular, a woman named kyra jean green was terrific. clean movements, beautiful and compelling presence.

one of my friends was more disappointed than the rest of us. a european, she felt wary of being called a snob but couldn’t help herself. “the quality of dance in this country is just so low!” she said. the good pieces were not great, not extremely interesting, not seriously original–and even the ones i’d felt were half decent were overwhelmingly conventional, she thought.

it was interesting. again, it’s that criticism of one’s home, which i know not everyone’s open to. but i can’t turn a blind eye to it, b/c it’s something we can learn from. why, then, is modern dance here less advanced and less challenging than in a number of other places, namely europe? is it just b/c this country is more materialistic, less cultured, and a lot more commercial than europe?

it’s funny, i almost became defensive for the US during our discussion, but that’s dumb. i’d rather figure out if she’s right, and if so, why.