To think and see is trademark sinopoli, but 'Fade' makes one feel weight of the pandemic

Ellen Sinopoli Dance Company performed its annual show at The Egg on Saturday night. (Photo by Gary Gold)

Over her 34 years as a choreographer, Ellen Sinopoli has always stood out as intellectual artist – one whose aim was to draw her viewer into unchartered landscapes inspired by music, art or poetry. Her works make one think. And they also make one see.
 
But the Ellen Sinopoli Dance Company wasn’t one to make one feel. That is until “Fade.” The piece, premiered during the pandemic when indoor theaters were shuttered, somehow missed my scrutiny in 2021. And on Saturday night at The Egg, when it was restaged, I was honestly gobsmacked because it was a part of Sinopoli artistry that I never saw her express. And I absolutely loved it because this is the first piece, except for maybe her 1991 “Dreams,” in which I saw her heart. It was broken, but beautiful.
 
It began on a dimly lit stage with five dancers in chairs. Almost imperceptibly, they moved their eyes and heads as if watching something float away. And then they started to slide, melting from their chairs, limply into the floor. Clearly, they were mourning.
 
Set to Henryk Gorecki’s “Symphony of Sorrowful Songs (Lento e Largo), the dance reminded me of Martha Graham’s “Lamentation” but on a larger scale – depicting not one loss but many. And like in Graham’s work, the pain was expressed by reaching out, struggling to rise again and lifting their heavy heads to search of solace. Ultimately, the five dancers came forward, held their hands over their hearts and laid them down on the stage – a resignation and acknowledgement of the irretrievable loss.
 
It was an impactful statement that must have landed even harder in 2021.
 
But that was not all that Sinopoli had to offer on Saturday. She premiered “Sometimes I Cascade,” a company work set to jazz violin music of Leroy Jenkins, which stands along what one generally sees from the choreographer. The dancers, dressed in costumes with fabric that looked like river rocks, swayed and tumbled as if swept away by a water’s flow or a wind that blew them off their foundation. The work had a drunken quality that also had audience swept up in its flow.
 
The evening also featured the previously reviewed “Celebrated Emblems” that paired the marvelous Musicians of Ma’alwyck with Sinopoli to create an evening-length work that delved into the desert’s vastness in “Dust Devil” and the need for community in “Telling.” The works were inspired by Missy Mazzoli’s “Death Valley Junction”  and James Lee III’s “Quintet for Clarinet and String Quartet,” respectively. 

The musicians of Ma’alwyck, directed by violinist Ann-Marie Barker Schwartz with violoncellist Andre Laurent O’Neil and guest artists Heather Chan on violin, Andrew Snow on viola and Brett Wery on clarinet, also performed George Walker’s “Lyric for Sting Quartet (molto adagio)” as an emotive interlude that had all ears at attention.
 
Finally, Sinopoli has revised The Egg Kids Project that gathers the communities most talented pre-professional dancers, age 12 to 18, to perform a work choreographed by one of her dancers. Emily Gunter obliged in a jazzy “Left Ajar,” to music by Ravayah by Amazonon. The six young dancers and Gunter reassured the future of dance is in capable hands.