Conrad Tao at the toy piano, with dancers Tamii Sakurai, Naomi Funaki, and Jackson Clayton (from bottom left) from Caleb Teicher’s CT&Co.
BOSTON--Choreographer/dancer Caleb Teicher and pianist/composer Conrad Tao opened a short run of their More Forever, on January 31 in the Plimpton Shattuck Black Box Theater at New England Conservatory. Part of Boston’s Celebrity Series, More Forever was first performed in New York last year, at the Guggenheim Museum.
With assorted American dance traditions like tap, jazz and Lindy Hop at its core, More Forever wallows in nostalgia. As Tao sits onstage at a lidless concert grand, self-operated mixer and assorted electronics at the ready, Teicher and about a half-dozen of his company members (Caleb Teicher & Co.) cover the amplified dance floor with handfuls of sand, creating scratchy sounds—read, a battery of percussion—with their footwork. A series of short choreographed vignettes ensues.
Teicher and Tao, both in their 20s, boast prodigy resumés. Teicher danced with Michelle Dorrance and others as a teen, founded his own troupe in 2015, and has collaborated with a vast array of genres and talents, from beatboxer Chris Celiz to the National Symphony. Tao performs standard repertory with orchestra and in recital and is a noted composer/improvisor. (Jaap Van Zweden and the New York Philharmonic premiered his Everything Must Go in
2018.) He also maintains an active chamber music presence with violinist Stefan Jackiw and cellist Jay Campbell in their splashy trio JCT (“Junction”).
More Forever stitches together a dozen brilliantly executed scenes—solos, duets, ensembles. Tao accompanies most, the music veering from adventurous solo piano to electronic groove ostinatos with improvisations over the top. The results were distorted when loud, the room was boomy, and the energy was insistent.
The dancers tap, scratch, swirl, stomp, clap, and snap fingers. Their sounds blend with Tao’s, who plays inside and on the keyboard with abandon, often improvising, collaborating with his own synthesized beats and/or ostinatos.
Costumes (Márion Talán) are all-black, casual. The set (Christopher Marc) is bare-stage-back-wall chic. The stage floor is amplified, as is Tao’s score (sound design by Joseph Wolfslau). Lighting (Serena Wong) is nocturnal, except for spots.
The sand scratching gives More Forever a kind of washboard, old-timey vibe, especially with the classic American, lindy hop/swing as the basis of Teicher’s choreography. The auditorium got dusty during performance —at the Guggenheim premiere, corn meal was substituted for sand, to protect the artwork.
The amplification did Tao’s solos no favors; his “overture,” an apparent improvisation, sounded raspy and harsh. But with the dancers scratching, snapping, and tapping, the piano’s electronics blended well.
In one duet, Evita Arce and Nathan Burg, holding tightfisted handfuls of sand, tried to touch and dance with awkward tenderness. Tao played fractured rhythms in the background, in a virtuosic frenzy. That was one of several arresting vignettes. There was plenty of humor and warmth.
In another moment, Tao sat onstage with a toy piano, and with three dancers initiated a call-and-response— Tao investigating his tiny keyboard, the dancers reacting with their feet and hands. This sturdy quartet was a musical and visual highlight.
In one of the final vignettes, Teicher seemed to offer an explanation of his narrative. He used random, one- sentence descriptions—“I am going to the show”—finally ending with the wistful words, “I thought I would have more time.”