Koresh presents love evolving
Season opener traces human progress with moves, costumes, grunts.
Philadelphia's most expressive company, Koresh Dance, opened its home season at the Suzanne Roberts Theatre on Thursday night, flaunting its signature emotive style. Ev-o-lu-tion, a reprise from 2009, adds primordial grunts to its signifying gestures. Koresh notes that if you flip the first four letters of evolution, you get love, which inspired this piece - an examination of how humans expressed love in pre-language ages.
It opens with the company women, in designer Brittany Ann Cormack's rags, struggling as if to free themselves from the muck. Asya Zlatina creaked offstage like her bones were breaking; with the heavy-metal Israeli band Ekho's clanking, it made me wince.
With biblical speed, not evolutionary, the company of 10 jiggle wildly, each in his own space, seemingly unaware of one another. Then squatting, they try mightily to stand. A triumphant solo by Robert Tyler celebrates man's ability to rise from all fours. It ends in a vertical leap with a high kick that lands in a wide split on the floor.
In another section, Jessica Daley, wearing a dress, encounters the raggedy women. They regard her with suspicion and curiosity. Pretty soon, all the women are in dresses and do a kind of happy dance. Fashion has begun!
Throughout the show, costume changes illustrate the progression of humankind. A section with the men in black pants and business-white shirts had them gesticulating as if on a stock exchange floor, hanging on subway straps, checking their watches and phones. Newcomer Kevan Sullivan replaces Joseph Cotler as the company big guy, but he moved with as much alacrity and graceful virility as the other Koresh men, and later, smoothly partnered Shannon Bramham.
Melissa Rector, founding member of the 24-year-old company, duets playfully with Micah Geyer to a Schubert number. Later, she vaunts her 6 o'clock extensions while seated on the floor in a solo. Fang-Ju Chou Gant takes several exquisite little solo turns. There were other wonderful duets, notably Zlatina's and Krista Montrone's dance to Greg Smith's score. Inevitably, the women wear the pants before everyone strips back to their primitive selves.