Frequent Flyers Uses Nostalgia and Striking Staging to Find The Holiday Spirit

Frequent Flyers Productions (FFP) is reaching back to the music of the mid 1940's and the time of World War II to mount a Holiday concert ("Swing Into The Holidaze"), this weekend (December 11 - 13, 2009) and next, at Boulder, Colorado's Dairy Center for the Arts. If you're old enough to have sat in your living room and listened to Hoagy Carmichael's "Stardust" win top song of the week on your Atwater Kent Radio for week after week, you will love this concert and how FFP's choreographers and dancers use that music. And you may be amazed at how audiences with most members under 40, and many under 25, relate to that music, finding joy in Louis Prima's rendition of "Sing, Sing, Sing," or George Gershwin's "American in Paris." Could it be that music is really ageless?

Danielle Hendricks has set a bungi bouncing piece to "In the Mood," with six dancers and bungi artists even finding unison and canons that are real despite bungi apparati that at times have minds of their own. J. Darden Longenecker's piece set to "Sentimental Journey" and "Stardust" takes place in a striking set defined by yards and yards of fabric, and nuance not always seen in much of aerial dance's "straight-ahead" choreography. It includes a long fabric solo to the first song by Valerie Claymore. Angela Delsanter's "St. Louis Blues March" is a rollicking piece set around a sailor danced by Liam Gladen, and opens with a delightfully stunning "pudenda shot" provided by Delsanter that will surely go down in dance history. Nancy Smith's "Chattanooga Choo Choo" gets lost in phrasing that can not sustain, but hers and Nicole Predki's energized "Sing, Sing, Sing" delights the audience with its verve and stunning aerial solos by Delsanter and Hendricks.

Post intermission Valerie Claymore presents a tender love duet set to "Baby Its Cold Outside," with Hendricks dancing the part of an in love, but anxiety ridden girl, and Liam Gladen her charming and oh so insistent suitor. Nicole Predki's "Amazing Grace" is delightful in construct using silence and humming to bookend it, and lovely, bass background trios and quartets to frame her understated movement score. Given the expectations established by the music Predki's task was daunting and she succeeded admirably.

The "closer"work, and best part of the evening, was Nancy Smith's "American in Paris," set to Gershwin's "narrative music," but based on Smith's own recent Paris experiences. Smith sets street scenes filled with delightful characters that interact in poignant and often funny ways. Lynda White is tethered to a center-stage sling throughout most of the work, that sling limiting how far she can go and accordingly interact, despite her obvious longing to be "part of everything." Umbrellas dance around her like ghosts and she is given only a teeny tiny funny umbrella of her own by Shoshana Bass, who shortly later swipes it back. And Bass also swipes her beloved camera. Nicole DeGasse and Liam Gladen flirt, dance, and have cocktails served on a trapeze hoop in full view of the longing White, those cocktails being served by incredibly tall stilt walkers - Kim Townsend, Claymore, Longenecker, and Hendricks - that make everyone else seem tiny as if in an Alice in Wonderland set. Stilt walker chorus lines happen, and eventually White is released from her tether, given her own special hat, and "belongs."

If things like the economy have got you down, treat yourself to "Swing Into The Holidaze." It is a sure antidote.

Donald K. Atwood MFA, Ph.D.

© Copyright World Dance Reviews 2009