Message-driven dance.
CLYMOVE is committed to virtuosic dance focused on authentic exploration
2024 - 2025 company Dancers
CLYMENE ALDINGER
JOVONNA PARKS
BRIDGET CRONIN
Roxanne Young
Sophia
Diehl
Arianna Stendardo
Khaila Espinoza
IMPRESSIONS: Clymene Aldinger's CLYMOVE Dance at The Ailey Citigroup Theater
By Kristen Hedberg/ IG @kristen.hedberg
Published on April 15, 2024
CLYMOVE Dance’s 2024 Spring Gala and Season celebrated the fourth year of Clymene Aldinger’s company, and left the viewers at The Ailey Citigroup Theater feeling empowered. The evening centered around women's mentorship, honoring dance legend Sarita Allen with CLYMOVE Dance’s Elisa Monte Leadership Award.
The program’s six works included two pieces from CLYMOVE Dance repertory and two world premieres: Hips by Aldinger, and Inner Tides by CLYMOVE member and their first commissioned choreographer, JoVonna Parks. The performance also featured Elisa Monte’s 1982 masterpiece Pigs and Fishes, danced in Allen’s honor.
JoVonna Parks, Roxanne Young and Sophia Diehl explore a near-constant entanglement in Cradle, directing their movements down a clear diagonal. The trio traverses in wide stances, hopping forward with open, turned out legs. They skirt through directional changes, at times squeezing under one another’s high-lifted legs. Playful moments occur when the trio’s hips purposely knock together, causing one member to break away from their clump and run around in a circle. Seamless lifts and partnering contrast the groundedness of their wide stances. The quirky trio evokes curiosity while highlighting their tenacity.
Strong, spritely Bridget Cronin portrays a chained spirit in Rockaway Metamorphosis. Her character navigates a physical confinement, set against the dance’s cheery blue backdrop and beachy music. Cronin dances with her hands clasped behind her back for the solo’s entirety. Her character undergoes an evolution, swelling in energy from opening knee crawls to ultimately standing and wildly spinning. Cronin offers confidence and assurance as she showcases her clasped wrists on her hips, swaying towards the audience.
Elia Monte-Brown (Monte’s daughter) takes the stage to introduce Sarita Allen. Monte-Brown tells us that Allen served as her mother’s muse when she choreographed Pigs and Fishes on the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in 1982.
Pigs and Fishes sweeps the audience into its whirlwind. The dance crescendos from Parks’ commanding opening solo into crisply executed ensemble movement. Specific formations in the space create visually stunning patterns as the dancers plow around each other with precision. Springing jumps layer against smaller repeated actions, such as swinging arms or scooping hands. It’s a marathon. The cast smiles at one another, digging from the deepest inches of themselves.
Regal and blooming, Young, Khaila Espinoza and Arianna Stendardo capture feminine strength in Inner Tides. The trio begins connected at the hands, and wearing shimmering silver bodices with long, pale skirts. Their connection lasts throughout the work as they circle each other, arms bursting above their heads, backs arching. Amid fluid partnering, the dancers arrange themselves into statuesque images which compliment Gregorio Allegri’s romantic choral music. They cradle one another, lowering each other into extreme hinges. Larger movements develop as the dancers separate, their arms stretching into more angular positions. As the trio returns to their opening stance, they appear mightier, again connecting with their hands.
Whiskey Noir (the next little girl), performed sublimely by Clymene Aldinger, speaks to temptation while feeling trapped. Aldinger, dancing through a diagonal of light wears a long, red dress which covers her feet. Throughout the work, she deliberately lifts her skirt to articulate to the tips of her toes, delicately taking her first steps towards a hidden something. Her character slips into dark scenes as the work progresses, her fingers tremble as they approach her gaping mouth. She crawls, writhes, contorts, and arches her back so deeply that the audience wonders how far she can go.
Hips, a brazen and bright conclusion, speaks to power, womanhood and comradery. The full company morphs between duet, trio and unison sections. Clad in nude long-sleeved leotards, the dancers undulate and rock, with many movements initiated from the pelvis. They lift one another in exciting bursts as Jessica Lillesand’s original poem reverberates: "Now there is no turning back, And the world will finally see her. She was never just a songbird, She was the vulture, too.” Through their ferocity, other recurring actions include bobbling heads, shimmying, bladed hands which rapidly chop the air, and trilling fingers. Their subtle, quirky movements sparkle against the dance’s overarching initiation from the pelvis. Hips leaves viewers awed.
CLYMOVE Dance is a collective to be on the lookout for. The powerhouse company left the sold-out house of the Ailey Citigroup Theater erupting on their feet.
CRITIC REVIEW
NEW YORK THEATRE WIRE
FUN WITH CLYMOVE
Reviewed by Barney Yates May 27, 2023
Choreographer Clymene Aldinger has a playful sense of irony, which we were blessed with at the Spring season of her company, CLYMOVE, May 26 and 27, presented in Williamsburg, Brooklyn at Center for Performance Research, 361 Manhattan Ave. The show, titled "Time Signatures," was an evening of nine contemporary dance pieces, all choreographed by Aldinger, consisting of solos, trios, and quartets performed by the thoroughly enjoyable ensemble of JoVonna Parks, Bridget Cronin, Angelica Mondol Viaña and Roxanne Young. The evening was dedicated to Elisa Monte, Ms. Aldinger's mentor. It recapped everything that has been created by CLYMOVE since its inception in 2021.
As an overview, let me point out that Ms. Aldinger has an attractive company of dancers who are very strong technically. Aldinger was a principal dancer with the esteemed Elisa Monte Dance Company and a protégé of Monte, so unsurprisingly, her touch is postmodern, jazzy and primal.
The evening I saw was abundant in commentary on femaleness, with the dancers role-playing as mothers, sisters, friends and babies. But it wasn't the usual somber stuff. From the beginning I noted how refreshing it was to find a female ensemble with a sense of humor.
The movement showed great flexibility in the dancers and originality in its physical comedy… Athleticism throughout… It was a lot of fun.
2nd Annual NYC SEASON
HERT
WORLD PREMIERE
DECEMBER 9TH + 10TH | 7:30 PM
ALPHA OMEGA THEATER
70 E. 4TH STREET, New York, NY, 10003
The dancers begin where ‘Femmenisto Chapter One’ ends. The first half of ‘Hert’ retells the latter half of ‘Femmenisto’ like a snake eating its tail, but from there the show unfurls a more vibrant twist. One that turns to spirituality, and a new kind of suffering that can be light and transparent. The dancers offer playful and sensitive communication through their bodies, since our words so often fail.
The curtain rises to a robotic politeness, where the dancers meticulously support one another in the most awkward of rotating body statues, shifting through a femme fatale whiskey haze of classic modern dance and trauma, followed by electronic darkness where we find ourselves unsure if the dancers are constricted or free. The slither of bodies struggle against confinement and funk and test their stamina with every lift and jump, often stopping abruptly to balance on one leg while the music pulses on. We then experience the comedic horror of a nursing mother busting a restrictive and yet incredibly virtuosic smoothness.
In the second half we awaken to a meditative investigation of sustained strength and breath, the dancer’s trance-like movements, moving as a collective unit, pull the audience into their own kinesthetic dreamscape, mostly because it becomes obvious the dancers have all physically taped into this greater awareness in unison. The show wraps with the dancers attempting to form the space they need to heal while authentically communicating without judgment, encouraging support through technical limbs and torsos that seamlessly flow from staccato to nimble, the unlimited swaying and swirling of hips, and deeply articulated feet.
