Dance | Hamden | Arts & Culture
Annie Sailer Dance Company members Sandra Kopell, Lynn Cooley and Yoko Kawai Kurimoto. Maxim Schmidt Photo.
The mix of textiles, all specifically arranged, were the first thing to greet attendees in Annie Sailer’s dance studio. Hot pink and white tulle sprawled delicately across the floor. Cobalt blue and pink honeycomb paper draped over a ladder. Five women entered the room in a single file line, each dressed in distressed jeans and white shirts.
They took their respective positions against the walls. One woman stepped to the center, moving her hand to her shoulder and then looking away. A beat passed, and another woman joined her. Then there was another, each meeting with an embrace.
Dancers brought that work to Hamden last Friday and Saturday, as members of the Annie Sailer Dance Company debuted “fall down past my shoulders weighted with light” alongside a number of structured improvisations. After two years in the making, the work revealed itself slowly, dramatically, almost cinematic in its style. Often, the work was as visually striking as it was physically interesting, a nod to Sailer’s other hat as a painter.
All performances took place at Your Community Yoga Center, where Sailer also teaches. Company members include Ginger Chapman, Becky Cline, Lynn Cooley, Yoko Kawai Kurimoto, and Elaine O’Keefe
“I’ve always loved the physical—connecting with my body,” Sailer said in an interview with the Arts Paper before the performance. “There is a vulnerability and fragility that comes with dance.”
The performance began with three structured improvisations meant to represent empowerment, love, and nature. The first, entitled “mercy,” featured five dancers (typically six; Chapman was unable to perform due to an injury) dressed in medium-wash denim jeans and white tops, all standing before an assemblage. Sailer, positioned in the middle, moved her hand to her shoulder and looked to her right. Breath, heavy enough to hear, filled the room.
The others joined in slowly, meeting in the middle to embrace. Around them, the sound shifted from heavy breathing to techno music; M.I.A.’s “Red River” filled the room, and the musician asked the question: “Can you tell me what has happened for you?” Dancers, in turn, stood in a line and moved their arms up and outward. It mimicked the push and pull of a wave. As if on cue, the sound once again went to heavy breathing, each dancer ending in a pose of a self-embrace.
The second improvisation, fittingly called “duvet,” featured quilts used as props and flowing costumes. The assemblage against the wall from the previous image was replaced with the dancers in pensive poses. One dancer put a hand on the wall as they gazed downward, another held their hands on their knees and looked out towards the audience.
As the dance progressed, company members incorporated the duvets, throwing themselves atop them, kicking them to move them into the desired place, and covering one another. At times—and with a soundscape that included two children laughing—it felt like a sleepover, young and carefree.
The third of the structured improvisations, dedicated to Dr. Sharon Clayman and titled “mercy 2 finding lilly,” included only Sailer. In a dark blue denim dress, she moved across the entire floor to the sound “Milchreiter” by M.I.A. with a combination of sharp quick movements that shifted into slow fluid moves.
After a short intermission, it was time for “fall down past my shoulders weighted with light.” Sailer said she views this piece as “symphonic”— that dancers, moving both together and apart, function like an orchestra. There’s a “shift where you’re moving together, like a flock of birds,” she said.
As they entered the room, dancers wore white tops, some with puffy lace sleeves and others with solid long sleeves. As the work began, two moved to the center of the room while the others stayed against the walls. Then they began to shift. At times they moved in unison; at times they mirrored each other with a delay, performing the same move one after another.
“There is a sense of closeness and trust,” Sailer had said beforehand, and it was true. The piece included poses where two dancers would take turns holding one another, a head leaned on a shoulder, arms wrapped around the other body. There were moments where four of the dancers moved together in pairs, one behind the other.
The performance ended with the two dancers in lace puff sleeves standing while the other three laid curled on the floor in front of them as the lights dimmed.
"I create forms that have a non-verbal, dreamlike, sort of illogical sensibility that to me make sense," Sailer had said in an interview before the performance, and the words echoed long after the dance had ended. "They have to feel right on a gut level."
Nelani Mejias is an alum of the Arts Council’s Youth Arts Journalism Initiative or YAJI, which she did in 2019. A graduate of Cooperative Arts & Humanities High School, she is now a student at Southern Connecticut State University, where she is studying arts administration.