This night was more than a performance; it was a celebration of dance in L.A.—more specifically, how USC has nurtured and supported dance in L.A. through Visions and Voices, its arts and humanities initiative, and USC Glorya Kaufman School of Dance. For 20 years, Visions and Voices has presented dance organizations at no cost to USC students and most times, free to the general public. Ten years ago, Kaufman School of Dance admitted its first 33 students, affectionately called the O.G. 33, before officially opening the new Glorya Kaufman International Dance Center in 2016. In the introductory remarks, Kaufman received a big shout out, noting that the arts philanthropist passed away this summer.
Visions and Voices – Decades of Dance in LA – Glorya Kaufman on screen – Photo by Henry Kofman.
To celebrate this 20th and 10th anniversary, respectively, Visions and Voices threw a performance-powered dance party in Bovard Auditorium on Thursday night, September 18 featuring Versa-Style Street Dance Company, JA Collective and CONTRA-TIEMPO Dance Theater. As the audience filled into the packed house, Ninabutterfly, a current senior at the School of Dance, DJ’ed, and postcards of past Visions and Voices performances, from Alonzo King LINES Ballet to Savion Glover, were projected onto a huge screen on the stage.
An audience filled with college students just feels different—the awkward, youthful excitement is palpable. Potential hangs in the air. Open laptop screens were sprinkled about as were groups of dancers-in-training watching every second and soaking up the inspiration.
All three of the dance groups on the program had been featured previously at Visions and Voices and were L.A.-based. Two were also celebrating their 20th anniversaries: Versa-Style and CONTRA-TIEMPO.
Visions and Voices – Decades of Dance in LA – JA Collective – Jordan Johnson and Aidan Carberry – Photo by Henry Kofman.
Taking the audience by complete surprise with every move, JA Collective were the definitive highlight of the evening. Founders and performers Jordan Johnson and Aidan Carberry are part of the O.G. 33 and, by the looks of it, are a pride and joy of Kaufman. They have gone on to collaborate with Paul McCartney and Frank Ocean and brands like Apple and Snapchat. It’s easy to see why: Their work is fresh, hypnotic and even unusual.
Visions and Voices – Decades of Dance in LA – JA Collective – Jordan Johnson and Aidan Carberry – Photo by Henry Kofman.
The first few minutes of their piece, “Castling the Unknown,” were baffling, but once they settled in, the audience could not take their eyes off the two men. Dressed in suits and playing with a bright light that switched on and off and a ticking sound, they sat across the table from each other and then side by side, performing both in sync and in complete opposition. They rapped and tapped their hands, elbows and arms on the table, bending and twisting to form myriad of shapes and then eventually began to intertwine their bodies atop the table—all the while keeping in perfect rhythm. The piece is brilliant on its own but knowing it was inspired by the historic 1972 World Chess Championship match between Fischer and Spassky in Reykjavik brought an “aha” moment. These fellas were phenomenal, and only when seeing them off stage and outside Bovard after the show, mingling with friends and family, did it register that they were indeed not superhuman.
Visions and Voices – Decades of Dance in LA – Versa-Style Street Dance Company – Photo by Henry Kofman.
Versa-Style, founded and led by co-artistic directors Jackie Lopez aka Miss Funk and Leigh Foaad aka Breeze-lee, are always a guaranteed good time. In this excerpt from “Freemind Freestyle,” the group combined a potpourri of energetic street styles including locking, popping and krump that elicited more than a few oohs and ahhhs from the crowd. Woven into the freestyles were moments of tight choreography, such as when the man in the middle of a handful of bodies lying on the ground orchestrated them into a wave spinning around him, or when everybody vibrated together as if electrocuted by the same current.
Visions and Voices – Decades of Dance in LA – CONTRA-TIEMPO – Photo by Henry Kofman.
If Versa-Style brought the funk and groove, CONTRA-TIEMPO delivered a stirring staging of resistance. The multilingual activist dance theater company was bold and articulate in its work, an excerpt from “joyUS justUS.” The dancers, in colorful, festive costumes, consumed the entirety of the stage with exuberant salsa, Afro-Cuban, hip-hop and contemporary dance movement. In its own words, this piece “reclaims the dominant deficitbased narrative of people of color in this country as being underprivileged, voiceless, powerless, and victimized, and flips it on its head by embodying stories of joy collected from communities of color in South Los Angeles.”
Visions and Voices – Decades of Dance in LA – DJ Ninabutterfly with audience dancing – Photo by Henry Kofman.
At the end of its set, CONTRA-TIEMPO invited the audience on stage to dance, and Ninabutterfly returned to the 1s and 2s. The event promised and delivered a night of participatory dance. The sheer joy of the performers and the crowd—who was both on stage and exiting the auditorium—was a reminder that dance in L.A. is alive and thriving.
To learn more about USC Vision and Voices, please visit their website.
Written by Jessica Koslow for LA Dance Chronicle.
Featured image: Visions and Voices – Decades of Dance in LA – CONTRA-TIEMPO – Photo by Henry Kofman.
