Dance Kaleidoscope "Nothing Is Forever, Darling" displays range from intimacy to abstraction

The world premiere on Dance Kaleidoscope's 2025 debut checked the high spirits and romantic cachet of

Joshua Blake Carter, DK artistic director

the company premieres in the show's first act, which played upon themes of intimacy and estrangement, and moved to the stark formal design of a world premiere in the second act.

The program, whose run ended  today at the Schrott Center, is named after the initial work, "Nothing is forever, darling." Joshua Blake Carter calls the piece contrary to usual title style, with no capital letters after the first word. It's designed for the sentiment expressed to seem offhand.

The clue is that it's a remark that Rufus Wainwright, three of whose songs are set by DK's artistic director, made in a magazine interview when he was asked about what future he intended with his current lover. The wave-of-tbe-hand statement is an affectionate rejoinder to anyone interested, a reminder that close relationships can't be expected to last.

The contrast between the company premieres of "Nothing is forever, darling," Sean Aaron Carman's "fever dream." and Carter's "Take a Gambol" in the first half and "Shaker Loops" after intermission seems instructive. Though the art of dance encompasses plenty of non-narrative presentations, hints about significance are signaled through representation in movement of real-life emotions.

In a more neutral setting, "Shaker Loops" uses fruitfully a long composition by John Adams. The rather strict minimalism of Adams' early style is celebrated in Carter's choreography for twelve dancers, with the added panache of an amplified version that sets its stake past the restraint of the original ensemble of seven solo strings.

Dance Kaleidoscope's Zay leaps in "Loops."

In the new piece, dancers are clad in a severe uniform red, though the cut of the costumes is a little loose, particularly for the women. Together with costume designer Terri D. Moore, Carter is picking up on Adams' pun harking back to the early American religious community of Shakers, who eschewed sexual intimacy and were thus dependent on conversion to increase their numbers. It was a recipe for gradual extinction. But the rhythms and pacing that "shaking" suggests fertilize Adams'  style and are choreographically  foremost in the first and fourth movements,  "Shaking and Trembling" and "A Final Shaking." 

As Adams built on his career, American subject matter remained strong. He ventured onto the inevitable emotional resonance of opera, encountering controversy for exploiting topical issues in "Nixon in China" and "The Death of Klinghoffer." Even in compositions without text, he  clearly wanted something more individual to express than the "repetitive structures" that seemed to hem in the pure minimalism of Philip Glass. He turned out to have his own version of sentimentality, too, which for me goes eye-rollingly overboard in "City Noir."

But back to the dance. The DK ensemble is rewardingly busy throughout "Shaker Loops." Carter's elaborated space-defining style gets a virtuoso workout throughout the half-hour piece. Lifts and other close interaction sustain the abstract nature of the music. What a psychologist would call "affect" remains flat. That is in no sense a flaw, but rather a tribute to what the music actually does. Carter pays it a compliment by recasting it in his own language.

Physical closeness in the choreography stays away from intimacy. The lifts and other brief forms of contact are just there, and all the momentary alliances don't hint at individual desire, reciprocated or not. The connections are formal, and eloquent mainly in formal terms, like a Mondrian painting. Most significantly, solo episodes don't evoke the pathos of loneliness or alienation from community, as do such passages in the Act I works.

Newcomer danced by Cody Miley reaches out in "Nothing is forever, darling."

I found them fascinating as footnotes to the main ensemble activity. The subdued middle parts of the score ("Hymning Slews" and "Loops and Verses") are met with evocations of ritual, involving men and women separately, then together. Laura Glover's glowing tube lighting for the opening and closing segments put a nice frame on the dancing, without tilting it toward emotional significance.

Different aspects of Carter take shape in the program's first half. The title work fills out Wainwright's contemporary torch songs with sketches of attraction and repulsion, neither element canceling the other. Instead, they are interactive landmarks for relationships in a new urban setting. The strong reality of transient liaisons grows and fades in the big city. Veteran DK dancer Cody Miley, at the summit of the company as an actor, anchors the shifting partnerships expressed as well by Courtney Jefferies, Morgan Ranney, Nathan Rommel, Julie Russel, Manuel Valdes, and Zay. 

The dancers reflect the stances and turns people present to each other, particularly when they have yet to get well-acquainted. Carter has concocted patterns that blend awkwardness and grace in combination, sometimes in succession. There are some passages of marching with upturned hands out in front, as though everybody were carrying a tray guardedly holding who they are.

Jonathn Cubides is airborne in "Gambol."

"Take a Gambol" presents Carter in his more lighthearted vein, in which relationships are more a matter of vivid self-presentation intended  to wow the public.  Who needs depth when you can don and doff sleek black jackets, fling them to the floor or exchange them through air tosses? We all have a strain of show biz waiting for its moment to emerge from the wings, looking for chances to let loo
se with bro shouts. 

The men and women in this piece are pals with gestures that salute the images they want to project. The music is full of the charm of the accidental: the breezy advice of Perry Como's "Catch a Falling Star," for example, or  the drawling Mississippi savvy of Mose Allison. The comedy was infectious, but also designed to keep its distance, with the ring-a-ding-ding insouciance of the Rat Pack.

The other piece, by rehearsal director Sean Aaron Carman, put  the variety of Carter's pieces aside to go deeply into a couple's intimacy. The erotic intensity of the duet between Cody Miley and Sarah Taylor had moments of modulation toward doubt and ambivalence, even conflict. But the bond appears to hold in this daring piece, flowing and exquisitely performed Saturday night.

On the whole, across the program's expressive range, everyone who attended this show with evident pleasure was usefully reminded: "Nothing is forever, darling."

[Photos by Lora Olive]

 

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