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    Review: Dancing to Tears for Fears, Until They’re Worn Out

    The Israeli choreographer Emanuel Gat presents “LOVETRAIN2020,” a work set to hits by the British duo, for his company’s Brooklyn Academy of Music debut.It’s true that we are living in a very, very mad world, as the Tears for Fears song goes, surrounded by “worn-out places, worn-out faces.” It’s also true enough that the faces of the dancers in Emanuel Gat’s “LOVETRAIN2020,” set to songs by the British duo, are strangely worn away, too. What’s the difference? Their faded, washed-out expressions are not the result of stress and hardship, but by two enduring tricks of the theater: lights and fog.Sometimes a confluence of music and dance is the tonic you didn’t know you needed. When the show began — “Ideas as Opiates” flowing into “The Prisoner” and, a bit later, “Mad World” — what came with it was the sensation of a fresh surprise, a flamboyant dance in the form of an encouraging pick-me-up. Sadly, that feeling didn’t last long. Gat’s train started to stutter midway through, and by the end, even the dancers’ joyful twirls and smiles couldn’t disguise that it had conked out.For its Brooklyn Academy of Music debut on Thursday, Emanuel Gat Dance made for a striking sight initially as its 14 members, draped in Thomas Bradley’s textural costumes — voluminous and elegant, shape-shifting and fantastical — slowly took over the stage. They created a glittering community, a world in which it seemed like the past was facing its future.The stage, too, glowing in a chiaroscuro treatment of light and shadows, had a way of transporting the landscape into a painting, just as it transformed the dancers, dripping in fabric, from two-dimensional silhouettes — they entered from the back of a hazy stage through narrow panels and stood with their backs to us — into moving sculptures. Their skin was luminous, their taut muscles sinewy.Often, there was push and pull between the rhythm of the music and pace of the dancing; sometimes Gat rejected the beat, and in other moments, embraced it. In one scene, a soloist contorted his body ever-so-slowly at the front of the stage, while a row of dancers were planted behind him, shifting from side to side in a basic step touch while arranging their arms in unison positions: up in the air, one elbow bent, one hand behind the head. It had a certain groove.But gradually it became clear that there was little beneath the ornate mood-board appeal of “LOVETRAIN” to warrant its length. The dancers’ physicality was arresting as they torqued their backs and torsos, melting onto the floor and swooping back up again with a feverish vivacity. Yet as Gat’s groupings persisted — a trio here, a more concentrated cluster there, a lone dancer running into the center of it all to deliver a little wiggle — the repetitiveness of their high kicks, raveling and unraveling arms and speedy, purposeful walks on and off the stage started to blur together.The dusky lighting, so startling at first, became increasingly murky. And Gat’s frequent silent sections — initially giving the setting a kind of haunting, heartbreaking poignancy — turned ponderous. In those quiet moments, I yearned for another Tears for Fears song until I realized just how repetitive “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” is. Don’t even get me started on “Shout.” Was this a missed opportunity, or is Tears for Fears music for the elliptical?But why did this dance happen in the first place? Gat, an Israeli choreographer who formed his company in Tel Aviv — it is now based in France — created it during the darker moments of the pandemic, when audiences needed a release. The world was crying. His musical choice made sense: Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith, of Tears for Fears, met in Bath, England, when they were 13 and living in single-parent homes, according to a program note. They named their band after the concept of primal therapy, which focuses, in part, on repressed emotions from childhood: Tears are a replacement for fears.As the show progresses, emotions build through the songs’ lyrics and the dancers’ silky, sinuous power, but Gat’s choreographic frame is too tenuous. Dancers, full of finesse and drive but little urgency, travel up and down the same diagonal; they gesture toward the audience with outstretched, beckoning hands. They rarely seem to be dancing on a precipice.Doesn’t surviving — and dancing through a pandemic — take courage? “LOVETRAIN” is neither daring nor especially passionate. It’s a look. The lighting, by Gat with technical direction and supervision by Guillaume Février, is the show, and the choreography, trapped in a haze of lights and fabric, never rises above it.Emanuel Gat DanceThrough Saturday at the Brooklyn Academy of Music; bam.org More

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    Bursting Into Dance: Gentlemen, Assume the Superhero Stance!

    “Spirited,” a revisionist “Christmas Carol,” leads with tap, thanks to the choreographer Chloé Arnold and her team, Ava Bernstine-Mitchell and Martha Nichols.The trailer for “Spirited” arrives feet first. Two silhouetted bodies trade syncopated riffs in a lively tap showdown. “It’s beginning to sound a lot like Christmas,” the title cards announce, before the dancers are revealed to be the film’s stars: Will Ferrell and Ryan Reynolds.“How did you know all that?” Ferrell’s character exclaims, panting slightly, as the dancing concludes. “I didn’t! I was just following you!” Reynolds’ character shoots back. “Tap is new for me. It’s a very expressive medium.”It’s rare, these days, for a major motion picture to lead with dance. But the dancing in “Spirited” — a revisionist take on “A Christmas Carol,” in theaters Nov. 11 (and streaming Nov. 18 on Apple TV+) — is more than holiday window dressing. A self-aware musical in the vein of “Spamalot” and “Schmigadoon!,” “Spirited” aims to charm musical theater skeptics by poking gentle fun at the genre’s oddities. The film’s elaborately choreographed production numbers offer a new way for Ferrell and Reynolds, neither of whom had previous dance experience, to explore the winkingly self-referential humor they’re known for as actors. They are constantly bursting into dance, and constantly cracking jokes about how strange it is for people to burst into dance.That they’re often in tap shoes can be credited to Chloé Arnold, the extraordinary tap dancer who led the film’s choreographic team. The director and co-writer Sean Anders fell for Arnold’s work after watching videos of her Syncopated Ladies ensemble online. They featured “some of the most intense, badass tap dancing I’d ever seen,” Anders said in an email. “I knew she was the secret weapon I was looking for.”To help manage an ensemble cast that featured several dozen dancers, Arnold brought in two associate choreographers, Ava Bernstine-Mitchell and Martha Nichols, entertainment-industry standouts with backgrounds in an array of dance styles. Together, they created pull-out-all-the-stops numbers of ebullient variety: If a crew of tappers is dancing atop tables, aerialists might be spinning in hoops above them while a ballet group whips through a pirouette sequence on the floor below.Tap it out: Ryan Reynolds and Will Ferrell in “Spirited.”Claire Folger/Apple TV+They also helped coach the top-billed actors, working for several months with Ferrell, Reynolds and their co-star and fellow dance newbie Octavia Spencer. “I’ve already asked this incredible choreography team to be best friends,” Reynolds wrote on Instagram during filming. “Just filed the paperwork and I’m excited for our new life together.”The resulting film brims with dance. Nearly every extra is a dancer, even in nonmusical scenes — look for the three choreographers in bit parts — and dance spills over into the film’s marketing. “Tap! In the trailer!” Arnold said. “When I saw that, I cried.”The significance of a trio of Black women leading a creative department on a big-budget movie has not been lost on Arnold, Bernstine-Mitchell and Nichols, all of whom are making their choreographic feature film debuts.“In the art of dance and the art of tap in particular, Black women have almost never had a position of leadership, proper recognition or proper compensation,” Arnold said. “There are so many times when, you know, your spirit is challenged. So for this creative group to bring us in, and not try to silence our voices, that trust was so beautiful.”Arnold, Bernstine-Mitchell and Nichols gathered on Zoom to talk about to talk about the dancing in “Spirited,” diversity in musical theater and choreographing for the stars. Here are edited excerpts from the conversation.This is the first time the three of you have worked together. What was the chemistry like?CHLOÉ ARNOLD Ava and I both come from the school of Debbie Allen, and we’ve worked together in TV a lot, on James Corden’s show. We have a very symbiotic work flow, so I knew she had to be part of this. And Martha and I know each other from teaching at [the dance convention and competition] New York City Dance Alliance — whenever I had a free moment, I’d take her class.AVA BERNSTINE-MITCHELL Our three personalities are the perfect balance. Chloé wants to move fast, she jumps first and thinks later. Martha moves very slow, like a scientist, she wants to look carefully at every piece. And I’m the organizer, trying to keep everybody on track.There were a lot of dancers to keep track of. How did you approach casting?ARNOLD That was wild, because it was during the pandemic, so we had to do it virtually. And we had 1,000 submissions. 1,000! Unreal. We had Zoom callbacks for 400, and then deliberated and got it down to an initial core 30 — later that went up to 90. We called upon our old friends, people we trusted. And we met new friends.I’m very thankful that I was able to bring all of the Syncopated Ladies into the movie. Because they’re a backbone for me. Having your people with you, that’s one of the best gifts of life.MARTHA NICHOLS Watching Chloé and her heavy hitters — Pam Yasutake, Anissa Lee, Gisele [Silva], Maud [Arnold, Chloé’s sister], the whole crew — to see tap done at such a high level on a film, with this many individuals, was super, super special. Because when you have something as specialized as tap, it’s much more common for the number of participants to shrink. And in this, it didn’t shrink. It was magnified.Chloé, were you brought in because the team wanted a tap movie? Or did it become a tap movie because you were brought in?ARNOLD It definitely wasn’t a tap movie to start! [laughter] It was going to be, like, Will and Ryan would do a little tap number, we’ll have a bit of dance here and a bit of dance there. But it ended up being eight or nine full-throttle dance numbers.And you know, having this big-movie budget, we kept asking for more. “Could you build a two-story scaffold that we could tap on?” “Can we cover the floor with water?” And Sean would always say, “Let’s go!”The choreographers on the “Spirited” set.Claire Folger/Apple TV +Of course, dancers want more dance everywhere. But why was dance important to this particular project?BERNSTINE-MITCHELL What’s great about the script is that dancers, our role in the movie was very integral. We weren’t “added happiness.” We were part of the storytelling.A lot of dancers ended up with speaking parts too, right?ARNOLD All the dancers were allowed to audition for acting roles, which is really special and really unusual.BERNSTINE-MITCHELL And all of the dancers got to name their characters — like, with a name that shows up in the credits. We all had a purpose for being in this world.The film tries to strike a balance between earnestness and we’re-in-on-the-joke nods to the audience. How do you do that in dance?BERNSTINE-MITCHELL I think that’s something dance can actually do pretty naturally.ARNOLD If you take it seriously, but it’s absurd, it works. And Will and Ryan are obviously great at being silly, but they were also like, “All right, if we’re not supposed to look silly, and we do, you’re going to tell us, right?” There was a lot of trust there.How do you teach actors — who happen to be big stars — to dance?NICHOLS It was about speaking to them in a way that bridged the gap between dance and the physical vocabulary that they already have, to make it seem less daunting. Like, we don’t need to say “stand in jazz second position” to Ryan Reynolds. Superhero stance! He knows what that is.BERNSTINE-MITCHELL Ryan wasn’t able to touch his toes at the beginning, but we got him there.ARNOLD That was a milestone day! Their willingness to be beginners, as these masters of their craft, was great.They were also really good at disarming everyone on set. Will started his rehearsal period right around National Tap Dance Day, which, you know, he hadn’t known there was such a thing as National Tap Dance Day, but as soon as he found out, he was walking around going, “Hey, guys, happy National Tap Dance Day!” “Did you know it’s National Tap Dance Day?” [laughter]When Octavia Spencer first met us over FaceTime, she cried. Because she didn’t know we were going to be Black women. She was like, “I’m so proud of you. I know I’m in good hands.” That’s a beautiful thing to feel — knowing we’ve got to lead her through this journey, that we’re starting from a place where she already sees us, she’s already connected.How did your perspectives as Black women shape the film?ARNOLD I think that you won’t see, generally speaking, a lot of African dance influence in traditional musical theater. But that’s the crux of my movement, my natural movement, coming out of the land of tap dance, which has the African influence in it.BERNSTINE-MITCHELL The way we heard the music was very different than how I think other people would hear the music. We found funk in all the songs.NICHOLS There’s always a pocket.ARNOLD And we created a cast that is diverse in every way, shape and form — the cast we want to see in musical theater in the future. Because growing up, our reality was not seeing that. So in this film you’re going to see dancers from ages, I think, 7 to 74. You’re going to see people from all types of cultures. You’re going to see all different body types in all their glory. And I hope that unlocks more possibilities, more ways to expand how films present work and how they hire. More