Dance: Putti Performed at Danspace NYC, November 30 - December 2nd,1995.
Reprinted From LGNY © 1995 Jack Waters
All rights reserved no reprinting without permission
The cycle is completed as the nave again mists up, this time with a thick cloud of smoke that consumes the Putti as he returns heavenward. The extreme beauty of this melancholic meditation conceals an unsettling morbidity. One notes the chronological relation of the plague-ridden dark ages to the High Renaissance period Cramer evokes. Without being obvious, he evokes through image, sound and sensitivity the very nature of Ars Longa/Vita Brevis - the brevity of human existence so relevant in this age of AIDS.""The many talents of Peter Cramer (choreographer, artist, photographer, filmmaker, etc.) were exhibited this spring in rare Renaissance-man form. Putti, performed as a one-night-only solo, seamlessly assimilated the ethereal ambience of the historic church that houses The Danspace Project at St. Mark's Church In The Bowery, one of New York's most essential contemporary dance and performance presenters. As the audience arrives, the space is misted in fog. Images projected onto the high walls above the church's altar-pastoral fields, clouds, sky-create the effect of an immortal's overview of the world. One's attention is drawn to Cramer's stunning "entrance" from on high. He has actually been there all along, but not immediately noticed because of the height of the vaulted ceilings. Making use of the rafters he hovers above the audience, suspended by cable and harness.
His descent is imperceptibly slow, the floating effect embellished by his High Renaissance drape and garland and the classically inspired ballet postures he assumes in the lush Cecetti style in which he is trained. Meanwhile, at audience level, the shadow of a possibly human figure is seen inside a huge block of ice set in a geometrically curved basin near down stage center.
A vague distortion of spatial reality, one at first wonders how the angel's shadow could possibly be cast at such an angle?But the figure is a loop projection. This section was accompanied by choral music. The angel becomes mortal upon touching down to earth. Dancing a dance of remembrance, through his silent sequence of actions he becomes a raconteur of an individual's journey that is also a global chronology of human existence. For music Cramer uses an audio collage of African tribal music, Gregorian Chant, whale songs and the elemental sounds of wind, rain and thunder
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