Spessard's performance virtuosity and depth have been noted by the critics:
“… Balanced by a quiet curiosity Spessard has the implacable and generous countenance of a good hostess, combined with a gentle animal-like inquisitiveness”. (Karinne Keithley, Dance Insider)
“Kristi Spessard claims the piece with her direct gaze, sensual but clear body movement style, and slight melancholy” (Wendy Perron, Dance Magazine).
“In a brilliant bit of acting, Spessard lounges in a chair and silently talks to God over the telephone, adjusting imaginary balls, and reacting with astonished outrage”. (Deborah Jowitt, Village Voice)
“Kristi Spessard demonstrated remarkable comic talent as she impersonated male bravodo (and indirectly, the Presidents unilateral swagger) in a mimed phone conversation on the red telephone. Her visibly pregnant form and spectral face gave dimension to her fusion of dance and silent screen theatrics, suggestion a female version of Buster Keaton.” (Julian Wise, Martha’s Vineyard Times)
The New York Times
Dance Review | Oasis 2007 and Changing Room
Street Seen: Performance for Summer Storefront
By GIA KOURLAS
Published: July 18, 2007
What is it about a dancer in a window that makes heads snap on a balmy summer evening? Perhaps, in a city deprived of a red-light district, it has something to do with the tawdry allure of a peep show.
On Monday there were plenty of heads turned toward the storefront of Chashama, the organization that transforms vacant properties into art spaces. At Oasis 2007, a festival of modern dance in which choreographers present short works twice every weekday, audience members can sit comfortably in the space’s Manhattan theater facing 42nd Street, between Second and Third Avenues, or watch from the sidewalk.
Ultimately, Oasis offers more for a gawking stranger than for a dance aficionado. To judge by many of the performances on Monday, this is the sort of choreography that looks better — but only slightly — through the glare of glass.
The first program actually began on the sidewalk with a preshow by the Modern Dance Awareness Society. Two women wearing red dresses, with blue buckets on their heads, shook strangers’ hands. It was a rather tedious example of wacky artistic behavior for public consumption.
There were other similar examples, including Malleable Dance Theater’s interactive work “Play the Dance!,” in which audience members and passersby were encouraged to request a dance by calling a performer’s cellphone. (Numbers were posted on the window.) Had it been better organized, it might have passed for children’s theater. All but Kristi Spessard’s strangely evocative solo “Underbriar,” set to music by Richard Strauss and John Luther Adams, were forgettable.
Oddly enough, on Friday night Ms. Spessard performed the same solo — which enigmatically charts a woman’s unsentimental evolution — in a different storefront as part of “Changing Room,” a separate installation and performance series by the photographer Anja Hitzenberger. The space, a former photo lab on Nassau Street in Lower Manhattan, is so minuscule that there’s a good chance a dancer will squash you if you’re seated on the floor. But “Changing Room,” sweetly unpretentious, is worth the squeeze.
Each week features a new installation by an architect and designer, Illya Azaroff, who reinvents the space with sculptures and a coat of paint (last week, a soothing blue). Throughout the week, Ms. Hitzenberger photographs artists there; performances are held each Friday.
Last week Todd Williams, enveloped in layers of fabric like some sort of ballerina-mummy, twisted and writhed within the confines of the tiny space. Ms. Spessard, equally haunting, inched her way across the floor to the window display, where she stretched out on a bed of what looked like aluminum flowers.
But the most bewitching part of the evening was the dance created by Ms. Hitzenberger’s camera. Numerous photographs, shown in quick succession on a screen, recast the live performers, especially Mr. Williams, in a ghostly, almost painterly light. This week the view from the street will change; chances are, the artistry will remain.
Oasis 2007 continues through July 27 at Chashama, 217 East 42nd Street, Manhattan; (212) 391-8151 or chashama.org. “Changing Room” runs through July 28, with performances on Fridays and the gallery open on Thursdays and Fridays, 145 Nassau Street, between Beekman and Spruce Streets, Lower Manhattan.
Spessard was featured on the cover of Ballet Tanz Magazine's 2007 Yearbook. Photo by Anja Hitzenberger.
