Crossing Boundaries at Glen Echo Park by Luella Christopher

CROSSING BOUNDARIES:

DANCES OF TRANSITION

Spanish Ballroom at Glen Echo Park

Glen Echo, Maryland

July 26, 2025 at 2pm

By Luella Christopher, Ph.D

Cover Photo: Kyoko Fujimoto’s “Joho Kata?”

In this multi-purpose venue adjacent to the Potomac River,  the outside air couldn’t have blasted any hotter (at least since last summer’s Capitol Hill Arts Workshop in DC) as an auspicious crew of choreographers joined forces again, bringing some new yet some returning faces to perform a kaleidoscope of premieres.  The matinee that I attended was noteworthy for its accommodation of young children who witnessed these creative works from the vantage point of floor mats placed directly in front of the dancers. (The choreography showcase was mounted in a highly intimate setting – the large studio attached to Glen Echo’s historic Spanish Ballroom.)

Most venerable among the organizers is Towson University Dance Department  faculty member Malcolm Shute, known for his pathbreaking work In contact improvisation and workshops circumnavigating the globe. Frequently invited to set dances for companies and colleges in the US, Shute holds an Arts and Humanities Fellowship Grant in Modern Dance recently awarded in 2025 by the District of Columbia Commission on the Arts and Humanities. He is the founder of Human Landscape Dance.

Of the three works presented by Shute, his most impressionistic came at the end of Act I. Titled “Anemone”, Shute uses three sets of dancers – each set comprised of triplets – to replicate the undulating effect of movement at differing levels of quiet elevation on the ocean floor. Starting with backs to the audience, an image of something remote and mysterious – yet readily accessible and infinite – is instantly achieved. Each set of triplets then moves mostly in unison, whether reaching above heads or gazing upward. A particularly stunning effect is rendered when the dancers – still with backs to the audience – turn only their heads and upper bodies toward the audience and then pause.  

Shute’s other two works are stylistically more familiar to this writer. Both “Curtains in the Wind” and “Winterbranch” (the latter a premiere) are crafted along with Kati Sopoci Drake, artistic director of Spacetime Dance and Mountain Empire Performance Collective as well as Laban-based somatic dance specialist. She fits Shute’s strong body like a leather glove. Of the two pieces, “Winterbranch” intrigued this writer the most. Shute and Sopoci Drake start together, then their rolls become separate. A distinctive moment occurs when grounded backward rolls end with a squat and feet in relevé. They move synchronously even when apart, then finish as a pair, although Shute breaks free. 

Co-organizer Kyoko Fujimoto deserves accolades for her daring choreography.  No wonder: she holds an M.S. and Ph.D in electrical engineering from the University of Hawaii at Manoa and is widely recognized for her fusing of artistic and scientific ideas. “Hisha” – set to Bach’s “Air on a G String” – explores the inner conflict of a Shogi match, a chess-like two-player strategy. Despite dancer Drew Scammell’s bold cartwheel around Nozomi Nishitani, this piece takes place mostly on the floor. 

The conflict between the two players is graphically displayed by their tracings on the floor – she’s first, then he copies. They use their index fingers to balance. Each other? In any event, they ultimately appear to progress toward the Japanese equivalent of checkmate. Tiny details aimed at making the audience pay attention! This work originally premiered last year in Kyoto, Japan and was introduced to US audiences with the Glen Echo venue. 

Fujimoto’s second work of the show, “Joho Kata?” springs from the current era of digital overload and is decidedly more airborne in execution. Originally presented in New York City at the Diffraction Dance Festival and Kyoto as a solo, Fujimoto’s piece shifted to the duet seen at Glen Echo with Scammell and Nishitani returning to perform it. The lithe Nishitani executes a series of strong grands battements to the side that morph into leg slides. 

Not to be outdone, Scammell pitches forward in somersaults that wind up in a handstand. When both characters are glued temporarily to the floor, their hands quiver. This represents the tension between gathering, filtering, and off-loading data  described by Fujimoto in her notes.  Scammell rises to a commanding  jeté entrelacé (scissors leap). Nishitani then throws herself into a soaring extension, lofted still further in the air by her former competitor and now-supporter. Score a win for the juxtaposition of humor and metaphysics!

Another highlight of the show was its initial offering of the matinee and the very first of the many premieres. “Cross Dissolve” by choreographer Keira Hart qualifies as what the late George Jackson, dean of DMV dance critics and I liked to call “contempomodern”, though she and her dancers look well-grounded in classical ballet. Hart is a graduate of both James Madison University and Arizona State University who has immersed herself in disciplines as diverse as Pilates and movement therapy in a hospital setting (Georgetown to be exact). She is a former dance educator at the University of Virginia, Maryland’s Coppin State University as well as Montgomery College, and founder of Uprooted Dance.

“Cross Dissolve” struck this writer as very linear and defined by unison moves – from the opening face-front stance of the five dancers (including Hart herself) to their walking and striding forward to an electronic syncopated beat and, finally, to walks in place and fixed gazes. There are floor rolls and grounded body lifts looking like modified “downward dogs”.  Intricate patterns on a diagonal shift to spirals –  with unison work becoming sequential in its visual effect. Swirling arms heighten the sequencing until they incite all to line up on another diagonal spanning the width of the stage. From my recollection of her prior choreography, this amounts to vintage Hart. 

Co-curator Sylvana Christopher, graduate of The Washington School of Ballet and The Ohio State University, presents two works – the first a sweet and sassy postscript to “A Friend Like You”, a.k.a. “The Pooh Ballet” that served as her master’s equivalency thesis for Washington, DC’s ICONS Choreographic Institute. The adventures of Winnie-the-Pooh and his coterie of friends brought welcome ripples of laughter during the waning days of the Covid (Delta) virus and in subsequent showings. 

Enchantment was derived by the ballet’s intricate characters as well as Christopher’s use of the rollicking strains of Europe’s preeminent jazz composers (from Darius Milhaud and now Igor Stravinsky) following the Great War.

Christopher’s six-minute “The Back Story” couldn’t reach that level due to the status of her original ballet as an expansive theater piece. As with The Washington Ballet’s recent “Alice”, audiences want to be able to distinguish between the multiple characters owing to the unique nature of each one. To her great credit, Christopher substituted at the last minute for injured Aaron Jackson in the key role of “Kanga”. What the abbreviated piece lacked in clarity of plot and characters was thus infused with pathos and an indomitable spirit. 

Her second work of the show, “Spare” suffered from no such drawbacks. Part 1 is deeply personal in its celebration of the longtime friendship and choreographic collaboration between Christopher and SylviDances veteran Maggie Lockhart. A family member has betrayed his or her whole unit. As a result, the two women must sort through the emotional debris. They alternately lift each other quite literally (in the air) and offer support. 

The second half of “Spare” deals with varied reactions of a group of passersby to those living on the street who beg for money. It is unclear why the choreographer lauds the decision of the one who accedes to an unhoused person’s plea since the expressed needs of some members of society may not be authentic. Flying oranges instead of money – an adroit use of props – emphasize the tenuousness of the dynamic between these two groups.  Christopher is the founder of Glade Dance Collective, Vigorous Roots, and SylviDances. She teaches early learners, educators, and families at Dance Place, Sitar Arts Center, and Inspired Child.  

“Cascade: An Excerpt from Healing Waters” by Stacey Yvonne Claytor completes the roster of choreographers for this memorable showcase at Glen Echo. Claytor is a product of Alvin Ailey Dance Theater with degrees from James Madison University and George Washington University. In the assessment of this writer, her piece did not quite hit the mark. The movement lexicon in Clayton’s choreography seemed a bit modern with occasional ballet steps, but fell short of fusing the two genres or using them in parallel fashion. 

Adopting Shute-style body rolls seemed derivative, as did the use of (mostly inaudible) spoken words. This may have amounted to just a technical glitch – one that could easily be fixed given the intimacy of the studio performance space.  However, that narrative in what appears to be a theater piece at heart was instrumental to supporting Claytor’s stated intention of exploring the process of personal transformation with the attending grace fostered by “healing waters”.  An audience that didn’t read her notes might not grasp such a theme.   

More is sure to emanate from these talented choreographers. Rumor has it that some of the pieces shown at Glen Echo approximate teasers meant to presage the construction of much longer works!  

Copyright Ⓒ 2025 by Luella Christopher

All Photos by David Dowling