Review: Full Radius Dance’s new ‘Saint’ is a moral tale with depth, polish

With two work-in-progress showings and a series of open rehearsals at the High Museum of Art behind them, the dancers exuded confidence with the movement and with each other.

Their technique was polished, their partnering and shared weight work — which involved dancers with and without apparent disabilities — was well-coordinated and unhesitating.

Regarding the piece itself, Scott’s choreography animated scenes that seemed drawn from a pack of tarot cards or a particularly vivid medieval hagiography. Organized in three parts, each set to an original score from a different composer, “Saint” explored the evolution of an ordinary, conflicted and complex life into a moral tale of divine favor.

Credit: Photo by Shannel Resto, SJR Photography

Credit: Photo by Shannel Resto, SJR Photography

The costume and stage design were minimalist but evocative, demonstrating how ingenuity and Gregory Catellier’s nuanced lighting can transform a bare stage and simple lengths of yellow and red tulle into a village square, a hostile courtroom, a religious house of mystic contemplation, the garden at Gethsemane or a scene of miraculous and uncanny resurrection.

The opening movement, “Blood,” began with all eight dancers on stage as the lights came up. Matthew Smith and Peter L. Trojic are wheelchair users; the others stood. They were dressed in black, long-sleeved tunics and flowing, light-gray and charcoal tie-dyed pants.

Though Saint did not have a linear narrative, each section seemed to depict stages in the elevation, or collapsing, of person into icon. The gestural vocabulary in “Blood,” set to Andrew Choe’s ambient melodies, evoked moments from a life that began with domestic or agrarian labor — hands moving as if sweeping or digging, for example. The life ended in judgment — Julianna Feracota slowly drawing her index finger across another dancer’s throat — and martyrdom, with seven dancers marching the eighth offstage, her head shrouded in red tulle.

In the second movement, “Visions,” Ptar Flamming’s composition resonated with soothing drones reminiscent of a monastic choir. The yellow tulle became a blindfold, ironically marking Courtney Michelle McClendon as a visionary. Two dancers, perhaps embodying jealous gods or manipulative clerics, used the trailing ends of the blindfold alternately to lead and restrain her, while the others often looked on in rapt fascination.

The final movement, “Wilderness,” ended with a reverently eerie tableau: seven dancers gathered around a supine, red-tulle-shrouded Jodie Jernigan as she slowly raised her arm and unclenched her fist. Preceding that final gesture, punctuated by Sean Kelly’s percussive score, the finale’s highlights included a beautiful, sensuous duet between Trojic and Jernigan and an ensemble section that showcased the versatility of the movement vocabulary Scott has developed over more than 30 years of teaching and creating physically integrated dance.

Rather than making a dance for six dancers without apparent disabilities and two dancers using wheelchairs, Scott created “Saint” with movement for eight dancers, some of whom might also be persons with apparent disabilities.

As Scott said during the pause between the bill’s opening work, “A Waltz for the End of Time” (2016), and “Saint,” physically integrated dance presumes the presence of bodies with and without apparent disabilities. Some of the movement can only be done by a person who uses a wheelchair or someone who is able to stand upright and support another’s weight. Most of it, though, including partnering and contact work, can be modified for execution by anybody, with or without apparent disability.

Credit: Photo by Shannel Resto, SJR Photography

Credit: Photo by Shannel Resto, SJR Photography

“A Waltz for the End of Time” integrated live music from the duo Flight of Swallows and Scott himself reading Czeslaw Milosz’ poem “A Song on the End of the World.” Like “Saint,” it also featured creative, daring floor work by Smith, in which he partnered with another dancer and executed controlled falls in his wheelchair. More abstract than “Saint” and as a prelude to it, “A Waltz for the End of Time” balanced the bill, creating an evening of dance that juxtaposed the quotidian wonder and apocalyptic loss expressed in the poem.

Full Radius Dance is part of a growing national and international network of companies changing the artistic landscape and creating opportunities for dancers with disabilities.

Laurel Lawson, co-founder of disability arts ensemble Kinetic Light, was a member of Full Radius Dance from 2004 until she left to found the collective with Alice Sheppard in 2016. Sheppard was a jurist for the 2018 Modern Atlanta Dance (MAD) Festival (which Scott founded and directs), and, the following year, Full Radius Dance commissioned a work from her, which it performed for the 2019 MAD Festival.

Neither piece on Friday evening was about disability explicitly, except perhaps for the fact that neurodivergence and physical disabilities have throughout history been seen either as blessings or curses, depending on the context.

Rather, by creating dance with and for dancers with apparent disabilities, Full Radius Dance implicitly invited the audience to examine how ableism has historically informed aesthetic judgments and assumptions about what bodies can and cannot do, who can and cannot dance. Here in Atlanta, Scott and the company have been dedicated to doing this work through dance for decades.

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Robin Wharton studied dance at the School of American Ballet and the Pacific Northwest Ballet School. As an undergraduate at Tulane University in New Orleans, she was a member of the Newcomb Dance Company. In addition to a bachelor of arts in English from Tulane, Robin holds a law degree and a Ph.D. in English, both from the University of Georgia.

Credit: ArtsATL

Credit: ArtsATL

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