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A gift of memories Choreographer Sean Curran translates thoughts of love for Dance Alloy dancers Friday, February 19, 1999 By Jane Vranish, Post-Gazette Dance Critic
New York choreographer Sean Curran can really appreciate the fact that, even though his future looks bright, he has the luxury, even the need, of dwelling in the past. As for the present, he says, "I'm thankful that, at 37, I can still get out there and shake a leg."
Dance Alloy
In fact, he has become not only a shaker, but a mover. And the Dance Alloy gets all three faces of Curran in this weekend's performances of "Embrace," a collective title featuring three world premieres (the other two by Alloy artistic director Mark Taylor), a Curran solo and Taylor's "Prestige of Evil."
Curran burst onto the dance scene as a featured performer with Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company and garnered a New York Dance and Performance Bessie Award for his work in "Secret Pastures." Today he does his own balancing act, first as a graduate and faculty member of New York University's Tisch School of the Arts and as a solo artist (recently featured in the New York Times).
Oh, and when he has "down time," he fills in on any one of four parts in the Off-Broadway hit, "Stomp," where he has been featured for most of its highly successful run. "It's a great way to supplement my modern dance income, which as we all know, you don't do for the money," Curran quips.
I catch him on a "down hour" on a Sunday morning, ready to rehearse for an upcoming chamber concert in Rhode Island the next day.
It's hard to believe that Curran found the time to spend five weeks with the Alloy last fall. "The dancers were so articulate and fluent," he recalls. "And the process was economical and efficient. You make something and then you give it away so that it becomes theirs. I can't wait to see what they've done with it."
He explains, "It's a quiet dance about lost love, found love, remembering a former love." Curran uses suitably evocative music by Leos Janacek that was written in the 1920s and includes "They Chatter Like Swallows" and "The Barn Owl Has Not Flown Away." It inspired Curran to turn "memories into musical studies."
The choreographer is also delighted to be performing three solo excerpts from his work, "Five Points of Articulation." In it Curran is "looking at the difference between loneliness and solitude." He calls them "self portraits. They take you to dark places and lead you back out."
The first portrait deals with sanity and insanity and the second with procrastination. The third uses the conductor's baton as a metaphor for make harmony out of chaos "which I'm working on in my life."
But Curran must relish his current chaos because, he admits, "If I didn't make art, I'd go a little crazy." To keep on that track, he is taking on the added responsibility of his own company. "It feels crazy to start this because I'm not good at asking for help. But, after five years, the solo thing can get lonely."
He also has a commission along with his mission. An older work, "Folk Dance for the Future," poked fun at "Lord of the Dance," a subject close to his Irish heart. Now the American Dance Festival wants him to create a "serious" Irish dance.
But it won't be a rehash for Curran, who asks, "How do you develop an original voice, an authoritative voice? I just try to speak an old language in a new way, make poetry with a rigorous honesty. Art is the only thing that makes sense out of this chaotic universe."
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Program: "Embrace," with world premiers by Sean Curran and Mark Taylor, along with Curran's "Five Points of Articulation" and Taylor's "Prestige of Evil."