Word: pecks
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Beverly Wilshire Hotel ballroom was filled by the 755 people who attended the $200-per-plate benefit. Gregory Peck, Sidney Poitier and Paul Newman were among those Hollywood notables on hand for the fete...
...Peck effectively draws upon just these childhood memories. We are amused by the dances in CityStep not just because the children are so winsome, but because they are reminders of our own, still vivid, elementary school memories. In the dance "Classroom", Peck uses only members from the CityStep company, blurring the distinction between adult and child. Suddenly we are oack in that interminable fifth grade history class, bothered by that hotshot who always knows the answers, scornful of the peabrain who thinks she knows the answer but then cannot get it out. The hands of the clock drag, boredom sets...
...stern admonition to "stay in line" is another memorable childhood burden. Lunch lines, fire drill lines and assembly lines are only a few of the long list of our youthful linear formations. In "Lineupheaval" Peck takes this geometric concept one step further. She fills the stage with lines of kids wiggling, stamping, walking and hopping-doing practically everything you can do whie still staying in line. It is grammar school teacher's nightmare. Quite naturally, the temptation becomes too much. The lines collapse into chaotic scatterings of high-spirited, giggling, obstreperous kids...
...PECK'S GREATEST ASSET is a lively imagination. In one piece, she sends her dancers on a library tour that initiates the young student into the awe inspiring depths of stacks of dusty volumes. But these industrious kids do more than just listen to the tour guide. They are literally and physically carried away by the "waves of knowledge" contained in the library. Their hands twitch at the thought of all that "knowledge at their fingertips." Almost all of the dances in the first act display this whimsy. It is a quality that enhances both the assumed playfulness...
...second act strays from the type of naturalness so easily displayed in the first. Peck becomes almost too ambitious, attempting even an exploration of the sociological problems of a lower-class family. Although there is some genuine tension portrayed, the choreography becomes self-conscious and vague. We are never sure exactly what the troubles of this blighted family are. More successful, however, is the dance "Night Out/Nightmare," in which a kid's experience of street life becomes a haunting, expanding dream...