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Flash Review
1, 8-13: A Course in Miracles
Avila, like the Phoenix, Rises (With a Little Help from King and a
Few Other Friends)
By Julia Ward
Copyright 2002 Julia Ward
WASHINGTON -- Homer
Avila's program Saturday at the Kennedy Center's Millennium Stage
opened with the provocative and funny film "Dubious Faith," which
imagines Avila as a priest steadily seduced by a long-legged and
determined temptress (co-choreographer Edisa Weeks). Filmed before
Avila lost his right leg and hip last year to chondro sacrcoma,
a rare form of cancer, the recorded piece has Avila skittishly surrendering
to his desires and accomplishing the difficult physical task of
walking on the tops of two up-ended wine glasses. The perfect distribution
of his weight is crucial in turning the fragility of the material
-- glass -- into its exact strength. The act might serve as an apt
metaphor for what Avila calls his "new morphology," a new way of
looking at his bodily material and technique. Small adjustments
to balance executed in tiny shifts and jumps of his left foot, along
with the precise counterbalance of his exquisitely refined arms,
turn Avila's "new morphology" into an incessant source of strength
and beauty.
The centerpiece of this
program -- Avila's first of his own since the operation -- was the
much-anticipated premiere of Alonzo King's "Pas de Deux" for Avila
and his worthy partner, Andrea Flores. The austere, angular choreography
is perfectly suited to Avila's hyper-controlled musculature. The
adjustments in balance he makes while standing, without crutches
or a prosthetic limb, may appear necessary to maintain his stance,
but one is forced to rethink the body's capabilities in a section
where the, at turns, dependent and confrontational Flores pushes
Avila down to the ground repeatedly. Each time, he snaps back up
to perfect attention and stillness. The angularity of Avila's quick
arm combinations and Flores's stark, specific arabesques, accompanied
by the compositions of Pauline Oliveros, give way to more sumptuous
dancing as the drone of Medieval chanting takes over. All in all,
it is a gorgeous piece of choreography and imagination. King has
said of this work with Avila that "any limitations are only in the
mind. He was turning on one leg, jumping on one leg, using his elbow,
using that body to find new ways to speak in dance."
Avila's program also
contained the solo work "Not/Without Words," a monologue that places
Avila first invisibly inside a box. Tossing out shoes, then a sock,
and so on, Avila reveals himself with the words, "I lost my shoe."
A comical first jab at his obvious loss of more than his shoe, the
piece continues with a both funny and increasingly poignant litany
of loss. "I lost my innocence," he offers as he tosses a teddy bear
from the box. Falling out of the box, Avila begins a dance that
is both daring -- with several jumps and turns -- and vulnerable
as embodied in his falls to the floor. It is, in the end, when he
stands staunch still on his left leg atop a small, school child's
desk, that Avila intones, "I lost my leg. I lost my fear." The full
poignancy of the piece arrives in the strength of his stance and
his words. The only complaint I have is that many dancers' work
is undercut by self-conscious readings of text -- a self-consciousness
that most actors work against. This weakness was present in Avila's
reading -- as he partially swallowed his last, most important phrase.
It is a small complaint, and one that is subjectively debated as
the amateurish recitation lent a certain humanity to the proceedings.
The program concluded
with an improvisational section with Avila dancing both with crutches
and without. Throughout the piece, individuals seated around the
stage, all with different approaches to mobility whether through
the use of a cane, wheelchair or no such apparatus, made their way
to Avila one-by-one, helping him to the floor and sustaining contact
with him for a number of seconds. Avila's solo was gorgeously danced
with every conceivable level and movement possibility exploited,
but it was in the moments of quiet interaction between himself and
those on the stage that the tenderness and possibilities of humanity's
awkwardness and sound abilities came through.
The program was rounded
out by musical interludes by composer and musician Miguel Frasconi.
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