Dances, Stories and the Winedark Sea
Shot by Alexander Rea on a Sony DCR-HC1000 using the built-in stereo microphone. One take. No editing.
Review:
The New York Times
Dance Review
“Movement, Yes, and Musings, but Don’t Call Him a Dancer”
By JENNIFER DUNNING
Published: September 11, 2006
Brendan McCall described himself as a movement artist in program notes for “Dances, Stories and the Winedark Sea”, an evening of solos that he performed on Saturday night at the Danspace Project at St. Mark’s Church. His interests clearly ranged more widely than dance alone, given that the program included a slyly fanciful short film by Alexandra Brodsky and text that Mr. McCall spoke, live or on tape, which he culled from writing by J. D. Salinger and E. B. White and from news articles.
The “news” here had almost nothing to do with daily events or history. Mr. McCall, who has also taught and directed Off Broadway and regional productions, seemed simply to be drawing the audience into an evening spent in his company and with his musings, with nothing much to prove.
He might have been a living room dancer in “Past or Present”, the suite of dances and excerpts that opened the program, set to music as various as teasing rock songs and bits of Faur’s Requiem and Satie’s “Gnossiennes.”
The pieces looked like movement exercises at times, created on the spot while playing with a particular piece of music, gesture or persistent notion in a cleared-away space. They became less sketchy but remained eloquent. Mr. McCall may not have chosen to call himself a dancer, but it was clear that for him dance could be thought made visible and palpable.
Ms. Brodsky’s film, “Miss Alyssa”, could be a fast trip through a man’s mental state after a night of heavy partying. Little animated figures darted through a wittily edited montage of snapshots of Mr. McCall and friends, nutty juxtapositions of tribal and party dancing, and clips from Hollywood films.
“The Winedark Sea” and “Original Face” were other kinds of voyages, through the world beyond and through his own mind, as he contemplated reality and who his might be, unassumingly and with the compelling clarity of an adult who has lived long enough to justify such ventures. Several images in”Original Face” hauntingly suggested Icarus in a long, slow float to another place.