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(9 minutes/ 6 dancers) Lila Goes Fast encompasses the break-neck speed, sensuous dramaticism, and ferocious physicality that are at the heart of Ellis Wood Dance. The piece combines technical phrase work and intricate partnering with an intense dramatic edge. With pure physical abandon complimented by an unabashed sensuality, the vibrant women of Ellis Wood Dance discover the pure ecstasy of movement, riding the fine line between control and freedom. “New Yorker Wood, who directs her consciously all-female Ellis Wood Dance, carries within her a modern dance provenance linking her back to one of our greatest feminine and feminist American dance icons, Martha Graham. Wood's parents, Marni and David Wood, were Graham dancers in the 1960s, who together later went on to found the dance department at University of California Berkeley, where Wood was trained. But Wood's dancers are by no means Grahamettes, less distinct copies of the original. They're real women: sensual, sexy, provocative, tough as nails, fearless. They relish the physical—Wood (a one-time gymnast) pushes her dancers hard to some technical boundaries—and in a work like the 10-minute program opener "Lila Goes Fast" the women get caught up in the sheer abandon of whipping kicks, snapping heads, full-throttled catches, falls and off-kilter balances. As an opener, "Lila Goes Fast" serves as a quick tutorial into Wood's sensibility: her women are strong, good-looking and assertive—like modern-day sorceresses who won't take no for an answer. In earlier centuries, no doubt, they would have been burned at the stake for heresy.” - Lisa Traiger, danceviewtimes *Photos by Elazar Harel |
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