Together: Nugent and Matteson at New York Live Arts

Jennifer Nugent and Paul Matteson
in their duet, another piece apart
at New York Live Arts
(photo: Ben McKeown)

I regret that I haven't seen Jennifer Nugent and Paul Matteson dance together for a long time. I well remember considering them among my favorite downtown performers--profoundly thoughtful, sensitive and moving in their artistry. Last evening, I went to New York Live Arts, excited to get reacquainted with these two Bessie winners and dance heroes of mine. I caught the New York premiere season of their duet another piece apart. Please do yourself a favor and go tonight--your last chance this time--if you can still get a ticket.

Nothing will distract you from these bodies. Now and again, that sort of spareness can be refreshing. Let us focus, for a minute, on the genius of the body.

Their low-lit performance space is completely bare and yet does not seem vast around them. They compel our eyes and subdue that gaping space. Labored breath and occasional, mostly muffled asides to each other provide raw, human sound to a space empty of accompanying music or soundscape. They are not even dressed for admiring gaze; items of dance-wear, stripped down late in the piece, suggest increasing vulnerability, increased transparency to each other.

And we don't even need that visual metaphor, really. From the moment Nugent first backpedals into the space and Matteson soon touches his forehead to hers, these two operate like limbs (and heightened senses) of one body. Locking, arching, twisting in and out and back into connection with one another, they each move with elastic, springy, sticky qualities as if puzzle pieces in 3-D animation. But, if they are pieces of a puzzle, they are polished ones that fit just so, with just the right knowing.

For most of the time, their intimate world is so tenderly quiet that I feared the scratch of my pen on my notebook paper would be heard in every corner of the theater. We are each exposed by their dancing.

This visual poetry of their duet's conclusion.... Well, let me leave it at that.

Lighting design: David Ferri

Another Piece Apart concludes with a 7:30 performance this evening. For tickets, click here.

PARTNERING WORKSHOP: October 13, 2-5pm

A toolbox of methods for partnering exploring negative space, interdependent support, responses to touch, and various ways of harnessing momentum. By a quick bridging of improvisation into set work—followed by imaginative reconstruction steps—we develop dances that embolden personal voice within kinetic collaboration.

For information on Nugent and Matteson's partnering workshop, click here.

New York Live Arts

219 West 19th Street (between 7th and 8th Avenues), Manhattan

(map/directions)

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