Thinking Dance Article
July 2023
"The Very Same, choreographed & directed by Keith Thompson and performed by Brendan McCall, is part of the Love Alone Anthology Project. The text, one section of Love Alone: 18 Elegies for Rog by poet and AIDS activist Paul Monette, was incredible. I have yet to read it, but after seeing this piece, I need to. The section used was one that revealed a sense of bitterness or effrontery and how it can play a part in grief. McCall was adept at varying the delivery of his text: casual, careful, forceful, witty, and gentle. It came in waves, dropping in and out of each phrase with ease so that yelling became mumbled frustration, a mockery, an offhand remark, a sigh to himself.
"The choreography carried this same quality, landing in different energies with seamless transitions. There were flicks of the chin, slight hand stutters, and shifting feet so precise and intentional. There were sharp jerks and bolts of tension and slow, hungry reaches, presses, and stillnesses. For every quiet gesture or quick relaxed aside, there was a place where McCall stood his ground and got larger, spiraling, turning, flashing lines and halts. As it ended, with a careful, quiet walk off stage, I felt pulled with it, wishing I could stay in the experience longer, but, knowing it’s a chapter of a larger work, that seemed right."
You can read the full article here.
NJ Art News
January 8, 2014
A new video segment from NJ Arts News entitled "Dance Diversity in NJ: Jersey Moves! Festival of Dance at NJPAC in Newark" explores how dance is flourishing in the Garden State. This lively video highlights performances by six diverse dance groups: Timothy Kochka and The Davis Academy of Irish Dance (Fedelmia Mullan Davis, Academy Director), Indian dancer Bani Ray, the NJ Tap Ensemble, Nimbus Dance Works, danceTactics performance group, and the American Repertory Ballet. Featuring spectacular single camera performance footage showcasing NJ's vibrant dance scene, "Dance Diversity" provides insight into what dancers think about while performing, and how they use movement and improvisation to convey images, narrative and emotion.
The video was filmed during the Jersey Moves! Festival of Dance on April 27, 2013. This season's Jersey Moves! dance festival takes place on Saturday, March 8, 8 p.m. and on Saturday May 3, 8 p.m. in the Victoria Theatre at NJPAC.
#letsdance
The New York Times
July 31st, 2006
Keith A. Thompson danced with Trisha Brown for nine years, and there was something of her whim-of-the-wind loose-bodiedness and spring to the pieces Mr. Thompson’s danceTactics Performance Group presented at Dance Theater Workshop on Friday night. But what made the program so exhilarating was the choreography’s simplicity and directness. This was an evening of dance that lived up to the promise of its title, “Without Pretense.” Created in the last two years, the six pieces suggested in their range of moods and themes that Mr. Thompson was laying out a variety of choreographic impulses. But the dances had a similar authority, in both style and emotional tone, perhaps in part because of the certainty of his engagingly individual dancers, who looked so thoroughly at home in each of the pieces. “JumpCut,” a male quartet to music by Robert Een, was an easy-moving introduction to Mr. Thompson’s choreographic world. “Razor Principle,” also for four men, added a slightly erotic tinge to the airy mix. “Merge,” a dance for two women and two men performed to music by N. B. Aldrich, opened out that world into a darker, more spacious realm. And “Vignettes: A History of …,” a group dance performed to Pergolesi, introduced a signature move in Mr. Thompson’s choreography in which bodies fold supplely in on themselves. Mr. Thompson proved equally adept at overt drama and comedy. His “Remembering Your Paradoxical Whisper,” to music by Mr. Aldrich based on compositions by Ryuichi Sakamoto, was a nuanced, well-plotted exploration of urgent emotional divides between an individual, danced by the eloquent Sara Roer, and four others. “Big Love,” danced to Etta James, Otis Redding, Mozart, Handel and Ernesto Lecuona, was a big, hilarious mess of a pajama party without a single wasted bit of silliness. Nicole Pope stood out for her bossy, goofy performing in a full-company cast that also included Robbie Cook, Gabriel Forestieri, Megan Mazarick, Jennifer Morley, Daniel Puneky, Ms. Roer, Ben Wegman, Daniel Zook and the lithe Billy Smith. Katrina Mauer designed the evening’s scene-setting lighting.
by Jennifer Dunning
Phillyist
July 1, 2007
Following Popkin and a brief intermission, danceTactics took the stage. Their piece, “JumpCut,” was truly the
highlight of the evening. The quartet of dancers showed a sort of consistent virtuosity that even some of the
best-known companies in the world sometimes lack: there wasn’t one missed step, one drop, one slip, one
miscount. The four (really, really attractive) men onstage moved in perfect synchrony with one another, almost
always touching, but never in a sexual way, and displaying the incredible power and strength that male
dancers possess and female dancers, by nature of both physiology and stigma, do not. It was truly beautiful to
watch.
by Jillian Ashley Blair Ivey
The New York Times
May 20, 2008
Keith A. Thompson’s years dancing for Trisha Brown resonate in “JumpCut,” his muscular, silky quartet for the danceTactics Performance Group. Heated emotions flicker below a fluid surface, as skeins of understated, virtuosic movement unfurl to Robert Een’s moody score.
by Gia Kourlas
offoffoff.com Dance Review
May 21, 2008
danceTactics performance group — the name manages to describe the quartet of Sho Ikushima, Ernesto Mancebo, Daniel Puneky and Daniel Walczak without conveying their sheer ease and flow, choreographed by Keith A. Thompson. “JumpCut” is not choppy or chopped-up at all, with plenty of capoeria and smooth lifts and apparently effortless acrobatics from nowhere, as in a moment of what looks like a reversed filmclip when Ikushima manages to roll across the floor and “fall” up into the arms of the others. Really good composed acoustic music by Robert Een, full of string bass and Brazilian flavor, complements the really good dancing.
by Quinn Batson
offoffoff.com Dance Review
March 6, 2009
Keith A. Thompson’s JumpCutput a nicely active cap on the evening, with the well-matched crew of Chris DelPorto, Jeff Jacobs, Daniel Puneky and Dan Walczak dancing the piece well. There is plenty of smooth lifting and more capoeira flavor, with small men moving big and fluid. The opening music has a circular feel as does much of the movement. The energy flow is continual and strong, with no real breaks other than two sections with spotlit circles, the first like a performance circle for each to show off and the second like a conversation circle for pairs to interact.
by Quinn Batson
Photography by Robert Flynt.