Stomp, shuffle and strut
Live performances of traditional music from the American South, West Africa and the Caribbean represented the richness of black culture and provided the most deeply expressive moments in a plotless, hourlong piece by Brooklyn-based choreographer and performer Reggie Wilson, “The Tale: Npinpee Nckutchie and the Tail of the Golden Dek,” at REDCAT on Thursday night.
In addition, wide-ranging recordings, including vintage American jazz and a ditty from Senegal in the Wolof language, supplemented the vocalism of Wilson and his two singers (Rhetta Aleong and Lawrence A.W. Harding). The problem was that over-amplification of the music, and especially the recordings, often overwhelmed the dancing by Edisa Weeks, Penelope Kalloo and Michel Kouakou, making human scale and skill seem somehow insufficient.
That was particularly unfortunate since the dances also represented an anthology of black traditions -- and Wilson found artful uses for them. Often he presented them in context, with music belonging to the same region or era, but sometimes he showed them in isolation as techniques suitable for any number of accompaniments -- even, of all things, the French ballad “La Vie en Rose.”
At such moments, all the barefoot, loose-limbed, stomping, shuffling, strutting and wild gestural fervor had the rangy unpredictability of early Twyla Tharp -- the same sense of utter freedom within a whole lot of cultural reference points. As with Tharp, those points included fad dances of the 1920s and ‘30s -- the Charleston, Big Apple, Susie Q, etc. -- presented in a brief medley before Wilson’s company explored more devotional sources.
As the only American-born member of his Fist and Heel Performance Group, Wilson served as host, speaking to the audience and guiding the performers into new tasks and sequences. Set and lighting designer Jonathan Belcher framed the company in tinsel -- shimmering wings as well as a backdrop pierced by vertical light stands -- with a high, horizontal bank of colored lights shining from behind. This gave the evening a party atmosphere, even though the costumes by Naoko Nagato stuck to a monochromatic, utilitarian look.
Much of the time, Wilson and the singers formed an independent cluster, circling the stage while the dancers performed dead center. Group energies predominated, though at the very end, face-to-face duets for Weeks and Kalloo, and then Wilson and Kouakou, revealed or depicted intimate personal relationships. Maybe this was the tale promised in the work’s exotic and unexplained title, or maybe the golden Dek was one of Belcher’s washes of colored light -- or the tinsel itself, always moving as if alive.
Maybe not. But even if the nature and relevance of Npinpee Nckutchie remains forever Wilson’s secret, he used fists, heels and voices adroitly in his supremely modest, instructive and endearing cultural cavalcade.
*
*
Reggie Wilson/ Fist and Heel Performance Group
Where: REDCAT at Walt Disney Concert Hall, 631 W. 2nd St., L.A.
When: 8:30 tonight, 3 p.m. Sunday
Price: $16 (students) to $24
Contact: (213) 237-2800 or www.redcat.org
The biggest entertainment stories
Get our big stories about Hollywood, film, television, music, arts, culture and more right in your inbox as soon as they publish.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.
