Review: WHAT REMAINS by Ty&Co
by David Glen Robinson

  

What Remains, Ty&Co's first offering of 2025, consisted of two lengthy contemporary dance sections in conjunction with Peter Stathas Dance of NYC.

 

 

The Stathas contributions were two duets, “Kathedra“ and “Assuage,” danced by Ty Graynor and NYC guest artist Lauren Twomley. Stathas’ choreography featured much spoking of arms and legs, many of which transitioned smoothly into 360-degree turns, sometimes multiples. The numbers began with the dancers perched on wooden chairs widely separated on the immense stage, but the dance soon obeyed the unwritten law of duets: “You must connect.”

 

Like most though not all duets, the connections grew intense and intimate as the dance progressed. A high point for this phase came when the dancers locked in close embrace on the floor, then rolled over and over on each other from the stage left wall to the stage right wall, like kids at play rolling down a grassy slope. Lighthearted and fun for the audience to watch, the sequence was no doubt a challenge to execute and make look easy at the same time.

 

 

Twomley showcased her mastery of quicksilver changes of affect, from the lover to the thinker of abstractions never revealed. Her rare physical skills certaintly matched Graynor’s. The tempo and intensity of Arvo Part’s soundtrack in the second half received its match in the dancers' spoking, leaping, adroit use of the floor. It happened too fast for this reviewer to isolate counterthemes to passages that had already appeared in the slower-paced earlier movement sections.

 

The technophiliacs at dadaLab may have turned a corner in multi-media live performance with their participation in Ty Graynor's “What Remains.” The single long dance filled the second half of the program.

 

It began with Graynor on the floor center stage, moving. A spotlight and camera directly above played on him in vertical perspective.

 

 

Projected videos began to appear, playing in circular medallions or frames, two on the upstage wall, one each  stage left and stage right. They were live videos of Graynor moving in his dance on the floor below. They were recorded and then broadcast live to create the four medallions. Meggie Belisle took her turn in the watchglass later in the performance. All the movement so projected was kaleidoscopic and ever-changing, even though in unison among the four medallions. This spectacular and uplifting innovation was a technical, graphical, and esthetic breakthrough.

 

But What Remains did not fail to delliver high-technique dance. Graynor’s choreography called for a lengthy ensemble piece with seven dancers performing, in various combinations, a long, demanding, athletic dance that ultimately can only be called the dance of life. Physical, mental, and spiritual components of humanity all had equal play. The spoking, turning, and copious floor work seen in the Peter Stathas Dance pieces in the first half of the show intensified in Graynor’s piece. 

 

Kanami Nakabayashi's solo stood out among several highpoints in the show, but she was not alone. The highly skilled dancers in "What Remains" were Meggie Belisle, Cellise Brown, Rachel Cox Culver, Jordan Gilbertson, Ty Graynor, Kanami Nakabayashi, and Taryn Lavery. Music by Franz Liszt, rarely used to accompany dance, provided a glowing soundtrack.

 

Ty Graynor brings much emotionality into his choreography and performances. To Ty&Co, emotionality is an element with as much weight as arm gestures or floor patterns. Graynor seems to have attracted to his company talent that natively embraces feeling in dance. Attraction, revulsion, love, hate and all stops in between—the ride doesn’t neglect confusion and ambivalence as signposts along the way of this high-energy contemporary dance romp.

 

Written material and word-of-mouth statements prepare the way into the dance. Ty&Co material consistently speaks of sharing the work and inviting the witness of the audience in the co-creation of expansive works of art. These works step off the marley of the stage to live beyond the footlights; they describe and participate in a human universe of greater harmony. Each audience member takes away that seed of greatness and meaning and nurtures its growth, as Meggie Belisle demonstrated at the conclusion.

 

Such guidance is much needed in our time.

 

The Saturday night show billed a short film by Ty&Co as a kind of lagniappe for attendees. This reviewer missed that surprise presentation because of scheduling issues. It is not known at this time whether the film will be presented in Austin’s Dance on Film series on February 27, 2025, at the Galaxy Theatres.

 

Follow Ty&Co on the usual social media.

 

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What Remains
by Ty & Co
TY&Co

January 24 & 25, 2025

dada lab, Austin