The Yard exploded into its summer season last week, with a powerful program featuring three works in progress by young female dancers and choreographers from New York. Nudity, explicit sexual imagery, spoken-word passages and experiments with light and sound were among the most startling elements in an evening that was marked throughout by flawless dance technique and fiercely compelling movement.
The performers — Joanna Kotze with Molly Heller and Maya Lee-Parritz; Molly Lieber and Eleanor Smith; and Anna Sperber with Emma Judkins and Anna Witenberg — spent three weeks creating their pieces at the Yard through the Bessie Schonberg Legacy Choreography Residency, which matched them with guest mentor David Brick of the Headlong Dance Theatre in Philadelphia. Last Thursday and Saturday, they presented the new work at the Yard’s Patricia N. Nanon Theater in Chilmark.
“These are experiments which may in fact turn into real pieces,” said Yard artistic director David White. Even in this early stage of development, the works held Saturday’s audience in thrall from the moment they entered the theatre to find Ms. Kotze, Ms. Heller and Ms. Lee-Parritz already moving in silence across the stage, along the floor and partway up the wall.
Ms. Kotze’s energetic piece, to recorded music by XTC, David Bowie, Luciano Berio, Arca and Cigarettes After Sex, was titled ’lectric eye. The sensuous and challenging duet Body Comes Apart, with Ms. Lieber and Ms. Smith, had a more avant-garde soundscape designed by James Lo, in which the clatter of a cafeteria kitchen morphed into pounding percussion.
Ms. Sperber’s work in progress, Again the Wolves, took place largely in silence, with moments of body percussion and excerpts of music by the Norwegian experimental vocalist Stine Janvin Motland. In the darkened theatre, the dancers performed with piercing electric lights that cast their forms into silhouette. It was an action-packed evening of contemporary movement to launch what promises to be a summer-long season of surprises from the Yard, which continues to broaden its portfolio beyond dance. Spoken word, humor and even ice skating will take center stage this summer, along with hip-hop, tap and works by both long-established choreographers and up-and-coming talents. Long-established choreographer Douglas Dunn brings his company of eight dancers to the Yard this week. On Tuesday afternoon at the Chilmark Library, Mr. Dunn screened a 1983 video of The Secret of the Waterfall, a dance he created with Charles Atlas that was filmed on the Vineyard for WGBH. At 7 p.m. Thursday and Saturday at the Yard, he will present his newest work, Tandem, which recently premiered in New York city.
“I think of Dunn as a kind of vaudevillian,” Mr. White said. “He’s very formal in his sense of music, but there’s also this anarchic sense of humor that flows through his work.”
The Yard also hosts its annual Pride celebration this weekend, with a potluck supper and DJ dance party Friday, June 15 and a family-friendly reading event Saturday morning.
Maine-based dancer-choreographer Sara Juli appears twice at the Yard this month, mining humor from the topics of maternity and propriety in two different shows. On June 21, Ms. Juli presents her solo work Tense Vagina: an Actual Diagnosis, in which she uses her voice, her body and audience reactions to “reveal all that is awesome and all that sucks about being a mother,” according to the program notes (which also advise that the show is not appropriate for children).
On June 23, Ms. Juli joins forces with choreographer/comedian Claire Porter in The Lectern: Rule by Rule by Rule, which hilariously dissects the protocols of contemporary life.
The Miami-based Rosie Herrera Dance Theatre brings the recent work Make Believe to the Yard on June 28 and 30. “It’s about faith and behavioral structures and their effect on what I call the spectacle of love,” Mr. White said.
Early July brings the annual TapTheYard festival, curated by Mr. White, Alison Manning and David Parker. On July 5 and 6, acclaimed young tap choreographer Caleb Teicher presents the dances Meet Ella — to the music of Ella Fitzgerald — and Small and Tall, featuring the differently-proportioned dancers Macy Sullivan and Alicia Lunden in a humorous pairing.
July 7, at the Martha’s Vineyard Performing Arts Center, the Bang Group performs a suite of percussive dances, distinctly different from tap, but driven by the same rhythmic force. Mr. White calls it “sonic dance.” The New York-based company also will preview a new work, based on music by Edgartown composer Dean Rosenthal, in which female dancers will play the parts originally scored for instruments.
The Yard returns to the Performing Arts Center July 14 with Odeon, a new collaboration between choreographer Ephrat Asherie and her brother, musical director Ehud Asherie, that was slated to premier at Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival in Becket June 27. “She’s an extraordinary b-girl [break dance artist],” Mr. White said. The music is by Brazilian composer Ernesto Nazareth.
Lida Whitfield, a Vermont-based performer, mixes dance and spoken word in her autobiographical work In Search of Air: Growing Up Dyslexic, at the Yard July 19 and July 21.
Choreographer Doug Elkins, who dazzled Yard audiences with his Sound of Music-inspired piece Fraulein Maria a few seasons back, returns with his newest piece July 27 and July 28. Titled O, round desire, the recently-premiered work is inspired by Colombian novelist Gabriel Garcìa Márquez’s novel Love in the Time of Cholera.
One of the mostly eagerly-awaited Yard events this summer is the return of Le Patin Libre, the groundbreaking Montreal ice-skating company that made its United States debut at the Yard in 2016 and came back to the Island the following year, selling out four shows at the Martha’s Vineyard Ice Arena.
In its first summer appearances here, August 3 at 7 p.m. and August 4 at 11 a.m. and 7 p.m., Le Patin Libre brings its latest work Threshold, with music by Jasmin Boivin. The engagement ushers in a new collaboration between the Yard and the YMCA of Martha’s Vineyard, which manages the Ice Arena.
“We now have a slot for working with ice artists every summer,” Mr. White said.
Ticketholders are encouraged to bundle up and wear warm socks to see Le Patin Libre at the Ice Arena, where the audience will be seated at ice level. A free public skate party will follow the Sarturday evening performance.
Hip-hop dancers The Wondertwins, who performed on the Vineyard during the Winter Yard season earlier this year, are back August 16 and August 18 with Jamaican-American choreographer Davalois Fearon in a provocative new work called Black. A family-friendly matinee performance is set for 11 a.m. August 18. Martha’s Vineyard choreographers get their spotlight on August 23 with an evening titled Island Grown Dances, and the Yard’s own resident dance collective takes the stage August 25. The season concludes Sept. 1 with an evening of work by the Schonberg (Boston) Fellows, promising young dancers invited to the Yard for a mentored residency with the Bang Group’s David Parker.
“It’s kind of a mirror to what we do at the front of the season,” Mr. White said. This year’s Boston fellows are Alex and Joy Davis, who work as The Davis Sisters although they are unrelated, and Marsha Parilla Danza Orgánica.
Mr. White also expects to add numerous community events, workshops, lectures and pop-up performances throughout the summer.
“People should just keep an eye out,” he said.
Choreographer Douglas Dunn will present his work on Thursday and Saturday.
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