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Learning to speak in body language
I’ve always been interested in brain and body in conversation or in antagonism. I’m a dancer, but I’m also a writer…For this piece, I wanted to focus on the moment when we learn to speak…and investigate that experience of funneling sensation into speech as an archetypal transition into selfhood.
-Mary Ellen Hunt, S.F. Chronicle, May 2, 2013
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Theory and Practice
The set design by Katrina Rodabaugh is extraordinary: Strung from the ceiling are jagged branches hung with exposed incandescent light bulbs, soft sculptures in soft blue in the shapes of a castle on a planet, trees sprouting from a whale, and organs, soft organs: lungs, heart, pancreas. Tegan Schwab, swaddled in long blue tubes, rolls fetally, larvally, the tips of her fingers and toes making light contact with the bare wood floor…The six dancers proceed with the hunger and animal investigation of children, test gravity with repeated jumps, wrap themselves in the soft blue shapes, try out their voices with monosyllables, then repeatedly group themselves into tense sculptures that strain the limits of the arms and legs to hold (“Form is different than feeling,” says the voice on the soundtrack, a long poem written by Mohr cut in with voices singing in clear tones, children babbling, the oceanic swish of the intestines)…Schwab explodes through an astonishing solo that mimics the way sounds deform space…
Irene Hsiao, “Theory and Practice,” S.F. Weekly, May 7, 2013
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Rigor of the Mind and Body
[In Failure of the Sign is the Sign], pleasure and rigor is also expressed in the product:
The soft blue sculpture intertwined with performer Tegan Schwab’s limbs. Pleasure.
The calculated structures of bodies tethered and released in balanced support. Rigor.
-Julie Potter, “Rigor of the Mind and Body,” Triple Dog Dare, April 17, 2013
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Top 5 Spring Dance Picks 2013
The sixth season of Hope Mohr Dance continues what Mohr does so very well: presenting her own very smart choreography but also, through her Bridge Project, bringing in colleagues whose work she admires. This year, it’s Alpert Awards winner Susan Rethorst with the West Coast premiere of her intricate and much-praised Behold Bold Sam Dog.
-Rita Felciano, S.F. Bay Guardian, “Spring into Arts,” March 20, 2013
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heatherdance.com
“I had seen the premiere of the full-length “Reluctant Light” at Z Space back in March, and it was fascinating to see Hope Mohr Dance again in this work, this time in an excerpt. Doing an excerpt of an entire piece is not easy at all; you must capture the essence and message of the work without the full choreographic material. Hope Mohr Dance did this very well. I still saw the juxtaposition of encasement and freedom, yet, there were also new discoveries, including a more layered exploration of ‘assumption’. I felt like there was a set of different questions being asked: what does a structure or boundary suggest; how does it temper behavior; how does its assumed role challenge or hinder interactions; what happens when we re-purpose an entity; how do we try and control our surroundings? ”
-Heather Desaulnier, heatherdance.com
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http://www.heatherdance.com/
S.F. Bay Guardian
Hope Mohr [is] exquisite, focused and powerful … a mesmerizing performer.
–Rita Felciano, “Weekly Picks,” S.F. Bay Guardian, March 21, 2012
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Scene 4 Magazine
athletic daring and playful exploration of line and form continue throughout the beautifully constructed work….Mohr expertly contrasts common pedestrian movement and gestures against precise and formal choreography so that neither form overtakes the other. The dancers communicate with each other and with the audience in ways that look and feel spontaneous, never contrived….her choreography is always detailed and intentional. As a performer, [Mohr] embodies the presence of someone who is unafraid to confront stillness and silence but instead opens herself to the possibilities she finds in her boundless imagination.
–Catherine Conway Honig, Scene 4 Magazine, April 2012
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Seattle Dances
….intriguing visual elements and dynamic modern dance vocabulary….thoughtful and formidably performed.
–Mariko Nagashima, Seattle Dances, April 3, 2012
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S.F. Bay Guardian
[R]igorously crafted works….an unusually satisfying evening of mostly pure dance…. Most satisfying was to see how carefully [Mohr's Far From Perfect] … opened the complex subject about the nature, and process, of making art into a contemplation of the pain human beings inflict on each other…. The first part, with its shifting relationships in which dancers constantly reconfigure space, was pure dance — economical, linear, fluid….
–Rita Felciano, “Creativity Continuum,” S.F. Bay Guardian, March 10, 2010
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Dance Commentary by Heather Desaulniers
Reluctant Light is a highly textured work, a layering of ideas; in both its narrative content and its structural form… Mohr’s choreographic style also speaks to unexpected combinations…. In Plainsong [t]he movement style was equally compelling. It had a strength of attack and a delightful edge, almost as if Mohr had perched the choreography precariously on a fence.
–Heather Desaulniers, heatherdance.com, March 24, 2012
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