LAST DANCE ----------
Author/illustrator Maurice Sendak ("Where the Wild Things Are") and his partner Arthur Yorinks are the artistic directors of their own theatrical company, The Night Kitchen. Pilobolus is an experimental dance company comprised of 3 artistic directors - Michael Tracy, Jonathan Walker and Robby Barnett - and 6 dancers - Rebecca Anderson, Otis Cook, Josie Coyoc, Matt Kent, Gaspard Louis and Benjamin Pring - who develop their works as a collaborative authorship. When Sendak, a Jew haunted by the loss of much of his family in the Holocaust, wanted to revive Brundibar, a children's opera written by Hans Krasa in the Terezin concentration camp, a collaboration was formed with Pilobolus. Words and visuals on one side clash with expressionistic movement on the other, but the resultant 'A Selection' is harmony itself in director Mirra Banks' "Last Dance."
Banks stayed with her subjects for a year, with DP Vic Losick shooting 125 hours of digital beta video. Her experience has been transformed into an 83 minute document of a project which started in a muddle, seesawed back and forth between controlling interests multiple times, then found its sweet spot. "Last Dance" is a fascinating look a creative process that overcame several obstacles.
All parties begin with good intentions and polite attempts to compromise and understand. Initially, watching the Kitchen duo with Pilobolus is like watching a left-brained individual trying to communicate with a right brainer. Pilobolus's directors describe their dancers as a jazz group.
Improvisation and impressionism are their bywords. 'They're not used to being talked to by a graphic artist' says one. Sendak, who clearly has a specific story he wishes to tell, gets frustrated by the touchy feely nature of the dance company. (Banks edits in archival Holocaust footage of Terezin, focusing on the children, as accompaniment to Sendak's tortured recollections, giving her audience more background on Sendak's viewpoint.) When Sendak demands that a dancer separate the group into those who will live and those who will die, he's told that it's just too obvious. 'But it's what this is *about*' the author retorts.
Meanwhile, we watch the dancers contort themselves into seemingly impossible visual expressions. One, Otis Cook, grabs on to what Sendak is aiming for and emerges as the central character of the piece. Slowly (we can only imagine how repetitive this process must be, as Banks is very efficient in building her story) we see 'A Selection' evolve from ideas and confusion into the fully developed Holocaust dance performed before audiences around the world.
"Last Dance" expands and constricts like the dancers that populate it. Banks' work has a life of its own.
B
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