Download MSSJPP Press 1997-2005

Scott/Powell Performance – PRESS 1997-2005
Never grasping at clever concepts, theatrical gimmicks or multimedia distractions, phenomenally talented
…choreographer Mary Sheldon Scott lets her dance speak for itself. In doing so she allows it a full range
of voices, from otherworldly whispers to howls worthy of King Lear.
Brangien Davis, The Seattle Times (October 24, 2005)
She proves a gifted mathematician…exposing the complicated fractal at the heart of everything beautiful.
Brangien Davis, The Seattle Times (October 24, 2005)
As in all her work, Scott reveals that small, pedestrian movements…trigger waves of emotions that
audience members weren't even aware they were harboring. This is what great and lasting art does, of
course: taps into some essential humanness on a cellular level.
Brangien Davis, The Seattle Times (October 24, 2005)
…the viewer is struck by how well Scott deploys groups of dancers; they effortlessly coalesce into lines
and groupings and then scatter, only to almost magically re-form again.
Lynn Jacobson, The Seattle Weekly (October 26, 2005)
SW Pick Ashes/Ashes - Choreographer Mary Sheldon Scott has been working with composer Jarrad
Powell for 12 years in a series of increasingly mysterious and beautiful works filled with oblique
references to the natural world.
Sandra Kurtz, Seattle Weekly (October 19, 2005)
…the dancers often work with a fierce determination and arachnid elegance, their long legs twisting
through a balletic lexicon while they stalk and slash across the stage.
Sandy Kurtz, Dance Magazine OnLine (November 2005)
(Powell’s) sonic environments vibrate underneath the choreography. In Ashes/Ashes, a world premiere,
the music creates the sense that the floor is static-charged and fuels the agitation of the footwork.
Sandy Kurtz, Dance Magazine OnLine (November 2005)
Vessel, the new work by choreographer Mary Sheldon Scott and composer Jarrad Powell that opened the
Northwest Artist Series at On the Boards Thursday night, is not unlike the volcano now rumbling beneath
Mount St. Helens. Despite what looks like periods of dormancy, there is a considerable degree of heat
and seismic activity going on under its surface. These forces slowly build over time, only to burst forth
unexpectedly in the most dramatic fashion…The broken vessel, be it a shattered vase or erupting
volcano, remains a potent metaphor for a once-whole self that cannot be reconstituted. In the hands of
Scott, Powell, and a superb ensemble of Seattle-based dancers, it becomes tangibly real.
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Jim Demetre (October 9, 2004)
Vessel, the latest work from Mary Sheldon Scott/Jarrad Powell Performance, is set on a stage adorned
only with a row of floor-to-ceiling tubes at the back, resembling a copse of bamboo. The tubes in the
center stand perpendicular to the floor, but those toward the end are tilted at decreasing degrees, as if
caught mid-domino effect. It’s the perfect setting for Vessel, which evokes the struggle – both physical
and metaphorical – of staying upright in the human body.
Brangien Davis, The Seattle Times (October 9, 2004)
…choreographer Scott has a true gift for shifting seamlessly between studied grace and violent
explosions of movement. Powell, Scott’s composer-collaborator for the last 10 years, is equally adept,
crafting a nimble electronic score that amplifies and supports the dance.
Brangien Davis, The Seattle Times (October 9, 2004)
Captivating, lovely, and utterly human….
Brangien Davis, The Seattle Times (October 9, 2004)
Scott’s choreography draws me into the quality of movement - sometimes languid sometimes aggressive,
sometimes nervous and birdlike - how each gesture is articulated, how the muscles shape themselves.
It’s like watching tigers lope or antelopes run; the whole animal moves, each limb of its own accord. Most
human beings - even dancers and athletes - move from their brains. Scott’s dance springs from the
sinews, the blood, the meat, and it gives even moments of ungainliness a kind of organic, affectless
beauty.
Bret Fetzer, On the Boards Blog Review (October 2004)
The set, lights, and music of Vessel fuse together magnificently, creating an environment which the
dancers inhabit. To me, consumed as I am with this whole animal interpretation of the dance, it felt like a
rainforest - but not a rainforest in which the animals live in harmony; the hungry, erotic, consuming,
violent drive of nature was always present, as deep in the movement as our bones are in our flesh.
Bret Fetzer, On the Boards Blog Review (October 2004)
I found it distilled, honed, sharpened like a claw - which, in my life, is how true passion expresses itself.
Ecstasy can be wild and unbridled, but passion demands concentration and focus, needs to feel every
stretch, every ripple, every squeeze. Passion lives in the details, in the fiber. Watching Scott’s work
wakes me up in my very cells.
Bret Fetzer, On the Boards Blog Review (October 2004)
Mary Sheldon Scott makes pictures, and pictures are still. From the beginning of Vessel, her
collaboration with composer Jarrad Powell, she choreographs via sculpture, showcasing a seemingly
inexhaustible talent for design. Exquisite dancers move sharply, gloriously from clarity to clarity. They
string holy poses like rosary beads.
Sara da Silva, On the Boards Blog Review (October 2004)
When the music quickens, the pictures go fast forward. Movements become short, angry---not angry as
in anguished, but possessed with a blank violence---the furious mechanical staccato of a manual
typewriter. Snapping in and out of intricate mechanical puzzles of two or three, the dancers embody the
wheels and grinding teeth of a ferociously technical and fascinating clockworks.
Sara da Silva, On the Boards Blog Review (October 2004)
At times the dancers were visions of measured frenzy; at other points they were masters of deliberation
and control. I saw images of birds, women in pain, glimpses of seduction, brute animal strength, absolute
determination.
Beth Brooks, On the Boards Blog Review (October 2004)
I really liked the visual design, all those big bamboo-like poles lit from within, flickering at one point in time
with the music, like light rain falling on the gamelan. The musical compositions and the choreography
reflect a true and strong partnership. The music never receded for me. It was always emotional. I have
to mention the groovy fur dresses – they rocked. My friend in the audience wants to buy one. But the red
dresses were hot – simple red sheer shifts.
Beth Brooks, On the Boards Blog Review (October 2004)
The whole unit of all seven dancers morphed, squirmed and changed creating an intricate intimacy of
striking tableau with impeccable timing. The flow of the group seemed to provide its own protection,
spinning like a giant amoeba, knifing turns like a school of fish responding to some unspoken instinct.
Beth Brooks, On the Boards Blog Review (October 2004)
The dancers wore tight gunmetal grey dresses with bustle-like arrangements of feathers and fringe that
managed to simultaneously evoke 19th century ballerinas, birds, and beasts without becoming
literal….The movement itself consisted of a series of repeated motifs that variously suggested classical
ballet, tawdry come-on, yoga sun salutations, equestrian prancing, stinging scorpions, and the fractal
flocking of birds.
Tom Milewski, On the Boards Blog Review (October 2004)
I’ve seen MSS/JPP three times now. Each time I am reminded of the visual artist Andy Goldsworthy, who
works in the natural world, creating art out of the already pristine landscape and its resources…Their
work feels natural, organic, and raw to the core. Instinctual. Yet, in witnessing it, you are moved into a
spiritual world. They seem to reference the natural world, but honor it further by adding on the best of
human intent, intelligence and respect. The work evokes something primitive and also profound. This
feeling captured in music and movement is then applied on eight beautiful dancers.
Sara Edwards, On the Boards Blog Review (October 2004)
Vessel is the latest fruit of the eleven-year collaboration between partners Scott and Powell. In that time,
Scott’s movement has become ever more fluid, translating ideas about the power of natural phenomena
into a physical vocabulary. Composer Powell’s evocative sonic environments for that kinetic world draw
on his skills with contemporary composition and Southeast Asian musical forms.
Sandy Kurtz, Seattle Weekly, October 7, 2004
Often haunting, always mesmerizing, the images and audio the duo creates tend to linger in the mind like
a dream.
Brangien Davis, Fall Arts Preview, The Seattle Times (September 9, 2004)
The result is a wild expanse of images, music and movement, sometimes melancholy, sometimes
spooky, sometimes funny, but always engaging. Think David Lynch doing a take on Swan Lake for
National Geographic.
Brangien Davis, The Seattle Times (May 24, 2003)
At times it seems the performers are evolving before our eyes - hurling themselves out of the primordial
muck and growing accustomed to their new shapes. Moments of unspeakable grace collapse into herkyjerky flicks and flutters of bodies under the pull of sheer instinct...Also delicious is Powell's haunting
electronic score.
Brangien Davis, The Seattle Times (May 16, 2003)
Here an insect emerges from a chrysalis, there a stallion flicks its tail. A flock of sandpipers flirts with the
tide as we hear waves of broken glass crashing on the shore. Animals make brief appearances
throughout the piece, preening, strutting, hunting and taking flight...But what makes the piece more than a
mere trip to the zoo is the way we are able to see the human in all of this. The human connection is
especially evident in the final section when the dancers don white half-tutus, calling to mind ballet, bird
feathers and societal artifice all at once. This is where we recognize ourselves most, in the painful rictus
of a fake smile, the foolish squawks of a ventriloquist's doll, or the bare need to be held and comforted.
Powell's score, at times trance-like, at others percussive and startling, provides the perfect backdrop to
these dreamlike proceedings...Much like the movement we see, the sounds we hear are haunting in their
vague familiarity, making Kingdom an audio-visual and unshakable deja vu.
Brangien Davis, The Seattle Times (May 24, 2003)
What starts out as a simple movement phrase...alters over time, shifting direction or phrasing, adding a
twist or a step, until you blink and find the dancer you were following suddenly is across the room or
suspended in someone's arms. The members of Scott's company are all dancing especially well right
now - the movement Scott is feeding them combines the powerful flow of modern dance with the clarity of
ballet, and they are eating up the challenge.
Sandra Kurtz, The Seattle Weekly (May 21-27, 2003)
"(Scott's) choreographic style compels the viewer to notice the energy rather than the movement. Scott's
dancers, impressively athletic and controlled, extend agile limbs from contorted and precariously
contrived postures...Their bodies move across the stage as if pushed by an outward force, creating
hypnotic patterns of unrestrained energy."
Claire Whitley, Queen Anne/Magnolia News (May 21, 2003)
Scott and Powell's work possesses notable maturity in thematic development...Their collaborative efforts
to blend original music and movement produce an alternate reality where preconceptions can easily be
suspended, where humans can become animals, the stage a jungle, and the concrete outside can seem
miles away.
Claire Whitley, Queen Anne/Magnolia News (May 21, 2003)
Definitely one of the most engrossing evenings of dance to be seen on a Seattle stage...
Rajkhet Dirzhud-Rashid, Seattle Gay News (May 30, 2003)
Natura Abolita (nature destroyed) is an examination of what it means to be human in an industrialized
world, to be separated from nature. Scott has created an animalistic movement vocabulary while
Powell’s score combines sounds from both natural and industrial sources. Together they make a visceral
and disturbing world.
Sandra Kurtz, The Seattle Weekly (February 22, 2001)
There are times when a new work is so compelling it seems to shuck off the structure that brought it into
being and take on a wild, hybrid life of its own. when I was afraid by choreographer Mary Sheldon Scott
and composer Jarrad Powell leaps to vigorous and terrifying life in this way...It is partly Powell's haunting
score: water dripping with amplified resonance as if echoing in a cave, wind whistling through pipes,
singer Jessica Kenney's vocalizations that veer between lyrical notes and grinding throat sounds. It is
partly Scott's risk-all choreography, frantic winding-up motions followed by hanging stillness, an inversion
of all classical lines into simian jerks that build to convulsive speed, then revert to length and clarity.
Mary Murfin Bailey, The Seattle Times (June 28, 1997)
As the director of Gamelan Pacifica, composer Jarrad Powell has long been familiar with the warm yet
strangely unsettling sounds of Javanese traditional music.
In his most recent presentation, a
collaboration with choreographer Mary Sheldon Scott, the surreal, dreamlike nature of Javanese folklore
is translated into an astonishing work of visual, musical, and physical art.
Trey Hatch, The Stranger (May 21, 1998)
A fluid fusion of sound, rhythm, and movement…it knocked me out. Nothing but bodies moving through
space, a dynamic cascade of gestures and physical compositions, accompanied by evocative
soundscapes and live vocals—the whole room vibrated.
Bret Fetzer, The Stranger (February 22, 2001)
Tracing/River/Sand rivets attention. From the first shrill, skewed notes you lose equilibrium....This is what
it takes: a conversation penetrating deep into the caverns of each other's psyche. In the audience you
can't avoid the reverberations, they touch so near the core of human experience. In that rarest of rare
instances when collaboration does work, it is like 'Tracing/River/Sand'. It is exquisite and magnificent-and harder than steel. Jae Carlsson, Reflex (August/September 1994)
Jarrad Powell’s resonant music provides a galvanizing partnership to Mary Sheldon Scott’s charged
choreography. In her movement, the body seems driven in four directions at once, until the rapidity of
changed direction forces it to stay put and simply vibrate.
Mary Murfin Bailey, The Seattle Times (April 3, 1998)
Because of the incongruous yet harmonious elements, the result is at once alarming and hypnotic.
Powell’s electroacoustic music…surges between disarming melodies and startling cacophony.
Meanwhile, Scott’s choreography, rich with upper body undulations and highly defined leg extensions,
carves through the space with undeniable precision.
Claire Whitley, Queen Anne/Magnolia News (May 22, 2002)
Both mystical and mystifying, Scott and Powell’s performance ventures have made a mission of creating
wordless languages that defy the confines of Webster’s Dictionary.
Leah B. Green, The Seattle Times/Northwest Life (May 21, 2002)
Both the movement and the music for the opera were inventive…Kali is rich with texture – from
complicated rock sounds to the breathing of the dancers to the bowing of the gongs. The four dancers
moved in utterly believable shapes resembling birds. The dance was highly gestural (frantic almost) and
suggestive of primordial animals and landscape. The musicians, vocalists and dancers were brilliant, with
all the performers showing great control and tremendous range.
Gigi Berardi, Dance Magazine (2000)
Mary Sheldon Scott's intense subterranean journey into things half-remembered set to Jarrad Powell's
perfectly intrusive live score: the way Jessica Kenney babbles into operatic hysteria, cutting into you like a
brain-surgeon's knife, unsettling your sanity for extended moments. Or her wave-motion of polished
stones cradled up in her dress competing with Powell's sand on a snare-drum surface, slipping you
downward into a substratum, a zone of raw feelings. And this sound-space is accentuated by the barren,
slyly-lit nocturne zone through which dancers Scott and Ben Warren pace their incremental tug-of-war.
Jae Carlsson, DanceNet (February 1997)
Mary Sheldon Scott/Jarrad Powell Performance - Audience Responses
Ashes/Ashes (October 2005)
I cannot even come close to the beautiful articulation of Brangien Davis, but want you to know how
incredibly inspired and moved I was by Ashes/Ashes. What a wonderful and utterly satisfying show.
Jess's opening solo gave us a tantalizing sliver of an opening into the movement vocabulary and tone for
the rest of the show. The completely satisfying "simplicity" of all of the elements helped us enter her
world (she was stunning). And from then on, there was no turning back. Stellar performances by the
entire cast; beautiful choreography, rich with moments of subtlety and softness and sometimes fierce,
dynamic energy; a gorgeous score that complimented the choreography beautifully (and vice versa). I
feel I could watch Ashes/Ashes a hundred more times and still find nuances and surprise moments. And
the third piece has remnants of what I remember from its premiere at OtB, but seemed somehow even
more effective in this revised state (and I loved it the first time I saw it!). Bravo to you and Jarrad, Julie,
the costume designer, singers and all of those to-die-for dancers (I'm so jealous). Thank you all.
Lori Dillon, Director of Development, ArtsWest
Oh my god Molly, I thought you and Jarrad had such a strong show. Everyone looked fantastic and I
loved the new dance. The men were great and the women were fantastic. In past shows I remember
thinking that some of the women stuck out as being so much more than others, but in this show it really
felt that everyone is in their own track and everyone is going high speed in the same direction. I always
love watching your work - it is so smart and surprising. I love to watch it and be surprised then as the
piece progresses it all makes sense, some times sooner sometimes later…. The other thing that I loved
was the center section in the new dance - I loved watching it develop - it was inspiring. Not a lot inspires
me and your work always does. When you see the dancers please let them know I am so proud of them
and humbled by their work and performance in your show and the honor they give to your work.
Wade Madsen, Choreographer & Professor in the Dance Department at Cornish College of the Arts
Congratulations again on an exquisite evening of dance...a profound body of work.
Tonya Lockyer, Choreographer & Dance Teacher
Great show the other night. I really, really liked the new piece. I think it is a very new and exciting
direction. It was nice to see it amid the other works, and the overall evolution. Great job, and
congratulations.
Tom Baker, Composer
Praying Mantis is one of my favorite pieces...for me it is up there with Doug Varone's "Mercury" and Pina
Bausch's "Cafe Muller" and "Rite of Spring."
James Dorfer, Dancer