Photo By Miguel Nicolas / Staff
By Miguel Nicolas
Weird can be hard to watch.
Or it can be the foundation of boundless creativity.
Mojalet Dance Collective weaponizes weirdness by embracing it to create compelling performances that are a thing of devious beauty.
Faith Jensen-Ismay brought her talented team to the PAC for a wonderfully weird master class in the possibilities of expressive dance. Its trio of long-form dances were far-out fun.
“Radio Hour” tuned into the collective’s experimental vibe and its talent for dialing the routine into the sublime. Inspired by radio advertisements from the 1940s-60s, overt and expressive dancers transformed past into pallet, painting their own colors over the black and white era of Eisenhower. “Radio Hour” was extravagant, edgy and lovely as a homecoming queen with a few too many tattoos.
“It has nostalgia and a little bit of absurdity,” Jensen told the audience. “It’s funny and a little witty. I found an album of radio commercials that is a montage of spoken text and music, and that’s really fun.”
Extra credit awarded for finding the fun in a radio message about what to do in case of a nuclear attack. Rather than hide under their desks, the Mojalet dancers found beauty in the unthinkable, frolicking in the fallout.
“Tainted,” on the other hand, cloaked itself in a darker tone. Lights faded, music quieted, and themes became somber like dusk in a dicey part of town. Atonal “music” teased emotion from the dancers who volleyed between loving embraces and throwing each other like discarded rag dolls. It was discomforting but arresting, and audience members leaned forward in their seats, pupils dilated, hearts racing with expectation.
Robby Johnson, the assistant director and a lead dancer, said the piece is a reaction to world events and how conflict brushes even those of us on other continents.
“It originally started with politics and (expectations), then it gets all weird with corruption,” he said. “You can become tainted.”
Mojalet stands for (Modern Jazz Ballet), a nod to Jerome Robbins’ athletic “West Side Story” innovations and Bob Fosse’s snappy sensuality in “Chicago.” Founded in 1991, Mojalet has been popular for four decades in San Diego County and has toured Switzerland, England, France, Germany and Mexico.
A grand show required a grand finale and an homage collage to the mid-century Las Vegas Rat Pack was just the right number, baby. Channeling the strutting spirit of Sinatra, Sammy Davis, Dean Martin, Peter Lawford et al, the Mojalet team’s emphatic “My Way” drove home the message that weird is where it’s at, dig?
Jensen-Ismay, a valued adjunct instructor at Southwestern since 2020, has danced for 40 years and kicked up magical dancing dust on stages in our region for more than three decades.
“I think Southwestern has a really cool energy,” she said. “I enjoy inspiring people, especially the students who train with me here.”
Mojalet, her brainchild and passion project, demonstrated once again why it is an essential San Diego County dance company. Its boundary-pushing fusion of technical talent and emotional expression continue to blaze a way forward for young dancers ready to grow beyond their strip mall studios into a bold new dimension of creativity and connection.
