ALBANY – The evening of Indian music and dance was meant to summons the Gods – Shiva in particular. The supreme being is the preserver and protector, meant to touch upon the world’s basic primal knowledge and keeps the universe in balance.
 
But things were hardly in balance on Friday night at The Egg. This is no fault of the amazing artists – two stellar dancers, two musicians and a singer – who performed on the state-managed stage. No, the chaos was created by The Egg, mainly promoting an event with a start time of 6:30 and then not starting until well after 7.
 
Because of the early hour, many people brought their small children. Parents did their best to entertain these wee ones as they stared at a naked stage where nothing happened for 45 minutes – an eternity in the life of a three-year-old.
 
It was also bad form that no one explained what was going on. And when a talkative MC finally took the stage at 7:15 p.m., no apology was offered to the restless crowd.
 
At this point, many were no longer in the mood, as the chatter went onto too long, and left. For those of us who stayed to see the professional dancers and musicians, who actually didn’t take the stage until nearly 8 p.m. and were on for only 30 minutes, the program was gratifying.
 
The bulk of this brief concert was performed by Kathak dancer Barkha Patel who performed with an outstanding trio of musicians including Devash Chandra playing the tabla with singer Shweta Pandya and Rohan Misra on sarinda.
 
Patel, dressed in a full white skirt with bells wrapped in her ankles invoked Shiva in a dance in which she lunged and spun, stopping with abruptness to raise her arms to the sky as if giving Shiva a guidepost to the disordered and distressed Earth.
 
She warmed up her audience with the stomping of her feet in quickly and complex patterns and by extending her fingers in flowery motifs.
 
Her beauty was complemented by the musicians. Chandra was extraordinary on the tabla, with his hands and fingers drawing the most delightfully rich sounds from the drums. Pandya, who offered an interlude between the two dances, was hypnotizing, vibrating the atmosphere and tapping into nature’s deepest ability to live and love.
 
The evening concluded with Patel who took the audience from behind – entering at the top of the aisle with an exotic dance in which she carried a vessel with red roses that she would crush before offering to someone in the seats.
 
Patel, a gorgeous dancer, mystified with her allure in the darken theater. The focus then shifted to a mirrored stage where she poured dirt from her vessel and raised her arms as if in  prayer.
 
Aside from her ability to bewitch, she did something else that I found inspiring for Indian dance going forward – they melded contemporary dance and theatricality into her movement – broadening the enchantment to the larger audience who actually stayed.
 
One final note. Dance has always been the neglected and under appreciated Cinderella of the arts. And while it used to enjoy broad support from Capital Region presenters in the last century, these past two decades can only be described as an assault on the art.
 
Here is my appeal to theater presenters who find dance too expensive and audiences too small, thanks to their continued dismissal, to bother booking it. Please respect the audiences you have. One way to do that is start on time.

What’s in a word?
 
For choreographer Imani Gaudin, “mamihlapinatapai,” an expression from Terra Del Fuego, there is much – at least enough to inspire the impetus of a work of the same name.
 
As seen on Thursday night at by her ensemble, Gaudanse, at Kaatsbaan Cultural Park, “Mamihlapinatapai” depicts the sensation that one feels when looking into the eyes of another human being, but it’s a connection that goes unspoken of and unacted upon.
 
That’s the start of what becomes something that Gaudin expands into a 35-minute duet, crashing through the stalemate to explore and let mature the tete-a-tete into free play. And Gaudin makes sure the audience feels the force – placing the dancers and the audience close together in a square on the floor.
 
It begins in the lobby of the Kaatsbaan theater with a singer/actor Christian Warner rallying the audience in an old-fashioned revival – one where the notion of God is questioned – not revered. He urges the audience to shout a collective “amen,” a precursor to the link forged in the theater where he ushers in about 50-odd people.
 
What hits the audience at first in the darkened room is the sound of a wind tunnel. It’s a hum surges and heightens the suspension of time and anticipation of what is to come.
 
As everyone maneuvers to a seat, the two dancers (Christian Paris Blue and India Hobbs) are already there, seated on their haunches in the square and staring into each other’s eyes. And then, as Blue moves toward the Hobbs, a hand to a shoulder or to an arm, Hobbs moves that part of herself away. The eyes remained locked, but with every advance, there is a retreat.
 
Though they never touch, these two are in synch. As they move away from each other, they also mirror each moves. They dip, bop and strut loosely, tossing off gestures as if they two are the coolest in the room. And then suddenly, they crack up. One laughs and the other joins in with giggling and guffawing. They now appear complicit in a game, and then they touch.
 
Their duet evolves into a pairing that is no longer a mirror, but grows two individuals who complement or complete until total liberation is achieved – Hobbs hanging from Blue’s arms as he swings her in a circle.
 
The piece doesn’t delve too deep, but it’s pleasant in that it speaks of our humanity, our tentativeness to get involved and the joy that could be had if we did. It’s also a reminder that connection, in this very disconnected world, might be worth exploring.

​Flamenco Vivo Carlota Santana stands tall as the nation’s most recognized and most enduring flamenco ensembles. Why?  Their artistry – dance, music and production values – rises over all others who devote their creative lives to the savory stew of flamenco.
 
The ensemble, however, shot their status into the cosmos with its latest evening-length work “Quinto Elemento” which had its world premiere on Saturday night at the Spa Little Theater in Saratoga Springs. Choreographed by Patricia Guerreo and a musical score by Francis Gomez, the piece expressed the lure and the power of the fifth element, ether or quintessence, that fills the space in our upper atmosphere.
 
Yet the ensemble of 10 dancers and musicians – including the composer who was on guitar – drew the element’s starry fire to the stage, ingesting its mysterious properties and unleashing it to an enraptured audience.
 
The 75-minute piece began quietly with the siguiriya persuading the dancers to take center stage. Their faces panned the sky – clearly watching something float by. And then with a signal from the guitar and vocalists, the sextet of dancers went to work, united in pumping their arms and legs as if ratcheting up preparations for in incoming bomb.
 
The stage cleared for a duet with Emilio Ochando and Yoel Vargas who encircled and ultimately connected to each other with fringed shawls. Their symbiotic dealings linked two worlds and cleared the way for what was to come – a fiery awakening.
 
The light literally turned on in shattering solo from Hugo Sanchez. Meant to express the pull of gravity, this dance was a fight between soil and sky. Sanchez's feet explode in shutters that reverberated. The rhythms  were juxtaposed by his twisting in the air – his hands coiling forth in a plea for freedom. And in the height of his struggle, he stopped and reached to the stars and at that moment a blaze of light shone down on him. It was dramatic.
 
When the ensemble returned – now donning sparkly vests – they ate up the space as if they were spinning planets in a seemingly chaotic, but truly organic orbit.
 
But before it was over, another section of the seven-part dance, dressed the three women, Lorena Franco, Fanny Ara and Rebeca Tomas, in black ruffled bata de colas. In a darkened stage, the trio was swallowed by the layers of fabric, a metaphor for the power of black holes. This section's placement, near the end of the dance, however, didn't make a lot of sense to me. It seems it should proceed the turning point solo. 
 
The work ended on a bright note, the six dancers circled the stage as if they themselves were the ether or quintessence – flying above their earthly bounds. It was beautiful.
 
One more thing, the quartet of musicians – two haunting singers, Manuel Soto and Loreto de Diego, and two guitarists, Gomez and Antonio Gonzalez – drove it all expertly.
 
I would highly recommend seeing the repeat of “Quinto Elemento” at 2 p.m. Sunday, March 9. Tickets can be found at www.spac.org.