Petronio Company takes final bow at Pillow

Jaqlin Medlock, wrapped in an American flag, performs in Stephen Petronio's "American Landscapes" at Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival this week. Photographer Robert Longo's background images play a large part in the 2019 work. (Photo by Jamie Kraus).

​Choreographer Stephen Petronio has always been a dancemaker who wears his heart on his sleeve and centers his mind on the topical. Thus, his post-modern sensitivities delve into his honest assessment the issue du jour. And while that might mean his older works may feel out-of-date, his newer works always touch an audience where they are living at the time.
 
One such work is his apocalyptic “American Landscape,” a company work from 2019 that is onstage at Jacob's Pillow this week. Set to a backdrop of photographs by Robert Longo, the piece explores America’s hand in its own destruction and that of the world.
 
But before I go there, I want to say that this is an important week for Stephen Petronio Company as it is its last. After 40 years, the company is taking its final bow in the venerable Ted Shawn Theatre at the Jacob's Pillow.

To mark the occasion, Petronio performs a new solo of his own making. Dancing and speaking, he tells the audience he is coinciding the end of his company with the end of western civilization. While the audience chuckled at that, it was clear there is an intense fear sweeping across the culture that Petronio categorizes as an attack on the LGBTQIA+ community and women, to name just two.
 
Yet this solo was also a wonderful baring of his artistic soul. He tells the audience, as he twirls in his iridescent suit, that he called himself the bastard child of Trisha Brown and Steve Paxton who taught him their post-modern style of fluid, sequential and spherical moves. However, as those who know Petronio, these moves translated on his body are sharper and ultimately center in on society’s deprivations. And this is where it goes in his solo “Another Kind of Steve.”
 
It's the ideal entry into “American Landscape,” in which Petronio transports audiences to a time where dewy forests and frothy oceans are lush and alluring. And it’s a place where an unfurling American flag oversees it all.

But as the piece progresses, the dancers struggle to maintain their peacefulness. The string composition, by Jozef van Wissem and Jim Jarmusch, grows more urgent, the dancing become less supportive, more aggressive. In the end, with many of the dancers down on the floor, a tattered American flag flies. The stark message struck a nerve.
 
That could not be said for Petronio’s “Middlesexgorge” from 1990, which felt dated. At the time, the piece, to music by Wire, was radical. But today, the sexy dance with a mix of numerous partnerships is ho-hum.
 
The 1969 “Chair-Pillow,” by Yvonne Rainer, who served along Brown and Paxton during the yeasty 1960s post-modern movement in New York, did not seem old at all. That piece for the company had dancers playing with chairs and pillows is a silly and simple, but entertaining affair.
 
The night opens with “Broken Man” from 2002. On Wednesday night, Larissa Asebado intrigued as the limp defeated executive. Here’s one piece, probably inspired by 9/11, that did not lose its punch through the years.
 
Finally, Petronio’s company performs a 2005 duet, “Bud.” Deniz Erkan Sancak and Nicholas Sciscione are perfect reflections of each other in a dance that likely hinted at the gay revolution that followed.
 
Petronio’s voice was always commanding so it is with sadness that his company’s journey comes to an end. Hopefully, in future years, his powerful commentary will be broadcast on an even larger stage.