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History is integral to Danspace Project\u2019s 50th-anniversary season. As part of \u201cDanspace@50: The Work Is Never Done. Sanctuary Always Needed.,\u201d a four-month festival<\/a> of performances, screenings and conversations, spring programs pay homage to an older generation of dance artists with fresh takes on notable works from their careers.<\/p>\n Dances can never really be brought back as they were. They exist in bodies, and each generation has a singular approach. How can the past be braided into the present? By bringing new dancers into the process, as works by Ishmael Houston-Jones and Fred Holland, Bebe Miller and Donna Uchizono have done. (In May, Marjani Fort\u00e9-Saunders will present Blondell Cummings\u2019s \u201cChicken Soup,\u201d from 1981.)<\/p>\n Here is a closer look at the offerings so far.<\/p>\n In 1983, at a Danspace festival of contact improvisation, Ishmael Houston-Jones and Fred Holland came to break the rules and make their own. Most of the directives they wrote<\/a> for their improvised duet \u201cOO-GA-LA\u201d were contrary. Since contact improvisation was normally done barefoot, they would wear punk boots; since it usually aimed for sequential flow, they would veer away from that and even avoid physical contact. But the start of their rule-breaking rule sheet was a simple assertion of difference: \u201cWe are Black.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n For \u201cOO-GA-LA Reimagined,\u201d the young Black artists Stephanie Hewitt, Kris Lee and AJ Wilmore created their own manifesto, identifying themselves as shape-shifting tricksters who would both revere their ancestors and \u201cbite back.\u201d That\u2019s what they did, after footage of the original<\/a> was projected and Houston-Jones danced a benedictory opening solo. (Holland died in 2016.) The 1983 performance, for all its radicalism, was subtle in its protean shifts; the new version was more flamboyant and freewheeling.<\/p>\n The three threw themselves around uninhibitedly, bouncing off, obstructing and pumping one another up. Much of their playful energy emanated from their turns at a D.J. station, mixing in classic dance tracks and gospel. Apart from their touching veneration of Houston-Jones, the spirit was irreverent \u2014 the best tribute. BRIAN SEIBERT<\/p>\n Before the presentation of Uchizono\u2019s \u201cState of Heads\u201d (1999)<\/a>, she took to the stage for a long-winded chat in which she spoke about her ties to Danspace Project and her love of dancers, whom she called \u201cthe giantesses and the giants of our field.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe balance on their backs,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n The program started with two such giants, Jodi Melnick and David Thomson, who took turns performing impromptu \u201cDedications\u201d for two randomly selected audience members. The heartfelt improvisations should have been a stark contrast to \u201cState of Heads,\u201d a trio concerned with political alienation. But both parts lacked sufficient tension. For \u201cState of Heads,\u201d three new dancers joined Rebecca Serrell Cyr, Levi Gonzalez and Uchizono, whose premise, seen in the performers\u2019 bobbling heads and disjointed changes of direction, was that heads of state were disconnected from the body of the nation. It\u2019s scary when satire becomes more of a reality over time.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n But what used to be searing now seemed like a warm bath, as it slipped into self-conscious reverie. The best part of the work was sonic \u2014 James Lo\u2019s score with its shocking opening boom. The work\u2019s precision, once severe, was harder to discern, and the setting was all too beige<\/a>. Ghosts of its former glory resonated in Serrell Cyr, sharp as ever in her rendition of an eerie mechanical doll, while Tim Bendernagel, a new addition, was eye-catching for the scale of his dazed efficiency. Yet aside from Lo\u2019s scorching sound design, performed live, this new \u201cState of Heads\u201d wasn\u2019t menacing enough. GIA KOURLAS<\/p>\n \u201cI didn\u2019t know how to do this back then,\u201d Bebe Miller said near the start of \u201cVespers, Reimagined.\u201d Back then was 1982, when she performed her improvised solo \u201cVespers\u201d<\/a> at Danspace Project as part of Parallels<\/a>, a series organized by Houston-Jones to gather Black choreographers working in experimental dance.<\/p>\n Now she knows. In \u201cVespers, Reimagined,\u201d she led an exceptional cast of much younger dancers (Bria Bacon, Jasmine Hearn, Shayla-Vie Jenkins, Chloe London and Stacy Matthew Spence) through an absorbing blend of improvisation and set choreography. Two dancers might make prayerful motions in loose unison as two others interfered like benignly meddlesome ghosts. Then the unison would fray or dissolve into solos, both simultaneous and singled out. Because of the format, the contrast between Miller and her colleagues was blurred, yet it remained legible. Miller\u2019s improvisations and most of the choreography had a soft-jointed gentleness characteristic of her and her generation. The younger dancers ran hotter, flaring more intensely.<\/p>\n The transmission of the present to the past came through, jokingly, as Miller wove among the others carrying a laptop playing video of dancing (the original \u201cVespers\u201d?) that they tried to mimic. But the past was present most strongly in Miller\u2019s spoken memories of what she \u201cdidn\u2019t know had a future,\u201d her recounting of what happened to the other Parallels participants and who had since died. \u201cThat was their now,\u201d she said. \u201cThis is our now. Now.\u201d SEIBERT<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\nIshmael Houston-Jones: \u2018OO-GA-LA Reimagined\u2019 (Feb. 27-March 1)<\/span><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Donna Uchizono: \u2018Dedications\/State of Heads\u2019 (March 13-15)<\/span><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Bebe Miller Company: \u2018Vespers, Reimagined\u2019 (March 27-29)<\/span><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n