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Boal's Mastery of Dance Evident in Solos
PETER BOAL SOLOS at AltogetherDifferent Festival
Clive Barnes, New York Post
January 13, 2003

At the Joyce Theater, 175 Eighth Ave. at 19th Street, (212) 242-0800. Series runs through Jan. 19.

EVERY year around this time, the Joyce Theater puts on its Altogether Different Festival, a three-week showcase for dancers who aren’t quite ready for prime time – that is, a full week at the theater. Instead, they’re given three performances to strut their stuff.

This year’s troupers are the Doug Elkins Dance Company, Philip Hamilton Vocalscapes and Keely Garfield Sinister Slapstick, all of whom have come and gone; ZviDance, which has one performance left on Wednesday; Donna Uchizono Company, coming up Thursday, Friday and Sunday; and Sara Pearson/Patrik Widrig and Company on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

But perhaps most interest was raised by the program called Peter Boal Solos, which has its final performance tomorrow.

Boal, a principal dancer with New York City Ballet, a leading full-time teacher at the School of American Ballet and a wonderful classic stylist, had commissioned solos from two modern dance choreographers, Wendy Perron and Molissa Fenley, and a classicist and fellow principal from City Ballet, Albert Evans.

All three solos showed the impeccable 37-year-old Boal in pure, magisterial form.

He is a fantastically gifted dancer, with a sense of line and the total muscular control that lends itself to a rare and beautiful manner of legato dancing that all three choreographers seized upon.

Perhaps the most interesting, partly because of its elusive dramatic subtext, was Perron’s “The Man and the Echo,” set to haunting music by John Lurie. Interspersed with a soundtrack of children’s chatter (provided by Boal’s own three children), it was danced by Boal in something like a business suit.

http://nypost.com/2003/01/13/boals-mastery-of-dance-evident-in-solos/

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