Writer, Artist and Critic
LEAH STEIN at Bartram's Garden, Philadelphia
Stein's work thrives on wide vistas, and this work began with her biggest yet. Her dancers popped up, faraway spots of color, in a long flat meadow, with the hazy Philadelphia skyline rising like the Emerald City beyond. As they approached the audience, they waved their arms slowly as if signalling, hopped up and down, leaned back and forth like the tall grasses that surrounded them, threw oranges in the air.
The oranges, floating like jugglers' balls and later, rolling down paths, showed both the strong visual sense and the surreal humor suffusing Stein's vision. Moving into the colonial-era brick courtyard (with the audience following), three dancers alternated contemplative posing--basking atop a stone wall, standing with hands folded--with brisk running and "botanizing" (finding hidden oranges).
Then we all moved to a sloping field dotted by stately trees, where the dancers were joined by two young, lively--and uninvited--participants. Stein's outdoor works are inclusive, opening your awareness to what's around the dancers, and these eager boys tested her ability to somehow pull everything into the work. A final, stunning setting found the dancers in the woods, with the Schuylkill glinting through the trees. Here, percussionist Toshi Makihara reached a crescendo of sound and movement, yelling and whirling with his gong.
My one wish for Stein's future outdoor work would be for a greater integration of her two-tier team of performers, dividing dancers and non-dancers; the non-dancers seemed capable of more challenging movement than they were given.
The experience of her work, unhurried and communal, calls up picnics, pickup ball games, and other summer-afternoon remnants of a quieter, slower time. Watching the dancers in the fields, I thought of Winslow Homer's paintings of children's games. Bartram's Garden, a miraculously surviving pocket of open land in the city, recalled for us a time when the land, like the hours of a lazy summer day, could stretch before you, unused and full of promise.
--Miriam Seidel