Choreographer Julia Adam’s VISCERĀLIS has its premiere July 12 at Tara Firma Farm in the Petaluma hills as part of a spectacular evening, pairing farm-to-table delectables with dance performance. JAD Experience, a project of Adam and her husband, entertainment producer, farmer, and rancher Aaron Lucich, has been creating these one-of a kind-events in outdoor settings around Marin and Sonoma counties each summer since 2014, excepting 2020 & 2021. From the start they have been magical happenings, treasured for their convivial communal dining and consistently strong artistic values.
This evening begins at 5:30 in the barnyard where guests mingle, sipping a refreshing shrub and sampling the charcuterie selections. A treasure trove of garlic lies aromatically drying along a nearby walkway. We gather around the tarp-covered pavilion the company uses as their rehearsal space. This year they have decided to whet our appetites with a brief dance created by guest choreographer Oliver Halkowich, before moving us along to dinner.
The Chicken Is In Her Bedroom draws its title from a lyric of the indie-pop song “Connect” by Vampire Weekend, to which it is performed. A contemporary ballet for three men and three women in colorful rehearsal-wear, “Chicken” is light and playful. Dancers zip past us at thrilling speed, dashing to the stage’s furthest edges and teetering there upon their toes. Uncertain as to what lies beyond, they hover with curiosity before taking long exaggerated steps backward. Classical balletic sequences, a woman’s graceful ascent supported by a lifting partner, or the unfurling of a series of pirouettes en pointe, are interspersed with comical riffs including limp-wristed piano-playing fingers and chickenesque head bopping (Jackie McConell’s mastery of these neck isolations continue to provoke our poor imitations many hours later). With arms widespread, they all experiment with the freedom of soaring, drifting, and tilting off center. Breaking the 4th wall, the dancers move away from the stage, bopping along, some paddling imaginary canoes down the pavilion as they beckon us on our adventurous journey.
Dancers performing Halkowich's The Chicken Is In Her Bedroom on barnyard stage at JAD Experience; Photo; J. Norris
In small groups, we wend our way up a dusty road through fields of golden grasses to the elevated dining location, looking out across vistas of rolling oak-dotted hills. A bar stocked with local organic wines awaits, as do 20-seats planked banquet tables. A sumptuous meal, served family style, is presented at a relaxed pace, by a gracious team of college-aged volunteer servers. Grilled peaches filled with goat cheese, garnished with walnuts, and drizzled with a balsamic reduction, provide creamy sweetness in counterpoint to the nutty pepperiness of the bed of arugula and sunflower sprouts upon which they are presented. Courses of Moroccan- spiced pork shoulder and tender grilled ribeye each arrive with seasonal vegetable accompaniments. The vegetarian beside me delights in the combination of creamy blue corn polenta topped with stewed okra, green beans, and tomato. There is a feeling of contented abundance as guests swap stories and savor the last remaining morsels before adjourning for the show.
JAD Experience guests sharing communal meal with stage riser in distant right; Photo J. Norris
It is past nine by the time we fill our mason-jar glasses with a hot beverage and find seats in the risers. The wooden stage platform appears to float within a sea of swaying grasses under a waxing gibbous moon.
Headlights approach up the pitted road from the farmyard. A late-model pick-up, carrying the dancers, pulls alongside the stage. Perched tightly along the sidewalls of the truck-bed, they make the bouncing of the ride a prelude to their dance, before pivoting gracefully out and onto the stage.
The first musical selection is The Who’s rock anthem “Baba O’Riley” with its opening lyric “Out here in the fields” which receives an appreciative laugh. The initial sextet embraces the joy of popular dances in a medley which moves from some of the odder American popular dances like the jerky straight-armed sprinkler wave, the iconic Disco-era upward finger point or the quirky angular posture created when holding an ankle in one hand the back of the head in the other, while hopping around, to a cross-stepping circle dance performed in unison with arms over shoulders a la the Hora.
Adam’s VISCERĀLIS, meaning visceral in Latvian, is a series of interconnected short dances exploring primal feelings of grief, anger, anxiety, lust, and love. Underpinning the universally understood emotions, Adam’s work draws us in with its loosely drawn narratives, which invite interpretation.
A red suitcase delivered to the stage in a cameo by Oliver Halkowich, whose retirement as a dancer was the subject of last year’s JAD Experience Regenerare’, evokes both curiosity and anxiety in the dancers, whose facial focus returns to it with magnetic certainty after each swirly waltz rotation. When offered, all but one is disinclined to take its possession.
A lusty and indulgent attraction finds Zoe Lucich and Augustin Lehner adopting a slouchy, slinky stroll in lock step, their swaying hips married. From the ground up she climbs his body, hand over hand. While he takes advantage of a moment to run his cheek along the length of her extended leg.
Adam’s chooses Radiohead’s melancholic acoustic song ““I Promise,” about being devoted to someone no matter what happens, for a stunning all-male trio which begins with dancers Skylar Cambell and Mattia Teora dancing a soaring love duet, supporting each other through ups and downs. Teora looks boldly out at us as he flies spread-eagle above a confident Cambell. Augustin Lehner enters, disrupting their partnership, drawing them apart, leaving Teora frozen in salute, a bystander in his own relationship. Yet, as Cambell and Teora find each other once more, we are heartened by their sustaining affection.
Adam’s ode to grief is haunting. Dragging open palms down their faces, sagging at the middle, sadness pervades the performers’ postures. They trudge forward with outstretched arms threaded through the armpits of their loved ones, as backs droop against chests. Teora personifies the one that is lost, falling and then rising to walk supported by others over the backs of others, only to collapse in a puddle once more. It feels true that at times he who has died is called upon to carry the living, just as they support him and each other in other moments.
Sultry, assured, Zoe Lucich is slappingly angry and yet hypnotically drawn in for another kiss in a tempestuous pairing with the versatile Teora. As Mary O’Riordan, of the Irish Alt-band The Cranberries sings, “I knew I'd lose you. You'll always be special to me,” from her song “No Need to Argue.”
The honesty and unsentimental clarity in Adam’s choreography, which includes deep physical contact in the form of lingering hugs and cradled carrying, is refreshing. The dancers embody the work with full intention and individualistic integrity. The musicality, good humor, and lack of pretension in all involved creates easy and deep connections with the audience, who sigh as one, as successively poignant sections conclude.
The cast of Choreographer Julia Adam’s VISCERĀLIS takes their final bow; Photo J. Norris
Review by Jennifer Norris, published July 14, 2024
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Production Credits:
VISCERĀLIS
Choreography by Julia Adam
Lighting Design by Cassie Barnes
Costume Design by Peggy Cope
Set Design by Aaron Lucich
Music by Townsend, Rota, Ehrlich, Yorke, Beving and O’Riordan
Assistant to the Choreographer Oliver Halkowich
Dramaturge Alexander Lucich
Dancers
Skylar Campbell (Houston Ballet)
Augustin Lehner (Houston Ballet)
Zoe Lucich (Houston Ballet
Jackie McConell (Diablo Ballet)
Jackie Oakley (Houston Ballet)
Mattia Teora (Freelance Dancer)
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