Dance review
Seattle contemporary dance company Whim W’Him heads into its 16th year this month with a busy new home on Queen Anne Hill, five new company dancers and a program called Winter ‘25 running through Jan. 25 at Seattle’s Cornish Playhouse at Seattle Center, with one show at Vashon Center for the Arts on Jan. 23.
Founder and Artistic Director Olivier Wevers has come a long way since he started out as a ballet dancer working on making contemporary dances and dreaming about starting his own company. Despite Whim W’Him’s growth, Wevers is still committed to commissioning and presenting three new dances each artistic season. Winter ‘25 continues the tradition with three premieres.
Wevers’ own work, “Unconditional,” opened the show. It’s a subdued dance, the curtain rising on a solitary figure lit by a spotlight, the rest of the stage shrouded in foggy gray mist. Michael Mazzola, the company’s longtime lighting designer, creates a mysterious space that gradually welcomes the company’s six other dancers, who form an undulating line.
Dressed in gray and black (former Pacific Northwest Ballet principal dancer Patricia Barker, now a Whim W’Him board member, is credited with costume design), the dancers flow around one another like waves. Wevers says he was inspired by water and by a poem by Jeff Foster called “Forget Unconditional Love.” Wevers’ dance offers a quiet, understated start to the program, and is followed by another introspective premiere by Chicago-based choreographer Robyn Mineko Williams.
Williams’ dances may be familiar to some Seattle audiences; they’ve been performed recently at PNB. The choreographer often structures movement around sets or simple furniture. This new work, “Ito,” features two small tables that seem to define space between the dancers. According to program notes, “Ito” is about ties between people, in this case three couples. It starts with what seem to be fragments of memory, lit with spotlights that go dark between glimpses of each couple. It’s unclear if we’re seeing shards of their past, the present, or perhaps their dreams for the future.
These first two works share a quiet, almost somber, sensibility, and focus on the intimate connections that people make, break or yearn to pursue.
The last dance of the evening, on the other hand, is the extrovert of the trio. Clearly the crowd-pleaser, “SCRAP” was created by Canadian choreographer Cameron Fraser-Monroe, set to the infectious music of jazz trumpeter Delbert Anderson and his quartet — a fusion of music from Anderson’s Navajo heritage, funk and jazz.
Fraser-Monroe is also interested in weaving his First Nations traditions into his dances. A member of the Tla’amin Nation of current-day British Columbia, he has a background in both hoop and grass dancing, as well as extended training with Canada’s Royal Winnipeg Ballet. All of those dance genres appear in “SCRAP,” along with traces of hip-hop, Western social dancing, even moments of humor, provided in part by the antics of veteran company member Kyle Sangil and newcomer Daeyana Moss.
Moss is one of five new Whim W’Him company members this season. Although they haven’t been dancing together for a full year, their onstage relationships feel warm and trusting. They offer the audience both technical mastery and a musicality that was particularly apparent in Fraser-Monroe’s dance, a propulsive work that shows off both Whim W’Him and the choreographer. It ended far too soon, with the audience on its feet cheering for more. “SCRAP” was Fraser-Monroe’s first work for Whim W’Him, and one of the choreographer’s first appearances on a U.S. stage. Here’s hoping it won’t be his last.