Press
Here Rests Peggy
Premiered and Presented by the Chocolate Factory Theater
October 20-30, 2010
"Ivy Baldwin's latest work, Here Rests Peggy, refines and condenses many of the fascinating things we've
seen previously from the choreographer... performed pitch-perfectly... Anna Schuleit's painting is the backdrop-a
gorgeous gray-grounded abstraction, with hints of human limbs-lit
beautifully by Chloe Z. Brown. Any feeling of formality from this relatively traditional mise
en scène is quickly banished as the dancers slam the wall with their palms, and crash into it with
the full force of their hurled bodies... Baldwin's works are very theatrical, and yet they are built
with beams, bricks, and furnishings of dance... I could've watched it over again right away."
Susan Yung, PBS/13 Sunday Arts
"Fabulously enigmatic... A year or so ago, I compared Baldwin to a hunter-gatherer, foraging for provocative
imagery to nourish her highly individual creative impulses... [Baldwin's] bent is for deconstructing
and combining elements to build bizarrely entrancing new realities that don't necessarily make spectators
any wiser about her sources. If you're listening from some parallel universe, Peggy Guggenheim,
this is not all about you... Baldwin and the other performers are extremely interesting."
Deborah Jowitt, The Village Voice
"The Peggy in the title is the heiress Peggy Guggenheim, a collector of art and lovers. Her spirit can be felt
in Walter Dundervill's period costumes, in Anna Schuleit's modernist backdrop, in the glamorous posturing
of the four dancers, and in the way the agitation in their poses, pressurized through repetition, turns violent.
Peggy is just a point of reference, though, and few of the work's felicities can be so directly sourced:
Eskimo kisses, dolphinspeak, a witty use of radiators."
Goings On About Town/ THE NEW YORKER
"A quartet of strong performers devoured the space in the small theater, whose far end was blocked by a plywood
wall, painted gray with skeins and bursts of colors (by Anna Schuleit) to resemble something like the Abstract
Expressionist paintings Guggenheim collected... These moments of theatrical violence floated through big muscular
patterns that had the dancers sweeping across the floor, arms pumping and scything, pelvises gyrating, torsos
hinging."
Claudia La Rocco, The New York Times
"Saturated with unspecified drama and hyper-physicalized emotion... An abstract painting by Anna Schuleit-with
dynamic splotches and sizzling lines-serves as the dancers' backdrop as well as a barrier to thrash
and thrash again... Justin Jones' surreal score plays out with a jittery low fever-an internal, obsessive,
often sensuous shuffling constructed of sounds natural, vocal, and cinematic... One appreciates the swinging,
full-body reach and exuberance of Baldwin's choreography and the all-in conviction of her dancers...
[Peggy] contains some 'haunted house' surprises-heightened, sometimes alarming uses of force and imagery-best
left to discovery by new audiences. She gets your full attention..."
Dance Magazine/ Ivy Baldwin Dance by Eva Yaa Asantewaa
"Baldwin's rich, sensitive, and thoughtful choreography and mise-en-scene will keep you more than interested
and-probably better-eagerly grasping at tendrils of recognition that strafe off her lovely piece,
leaving you in a rapt state of fascination and curiosity for the duration of the show... a dynamic piece of
choreography for four dancers that skips merrily from a vaguely jazz influenced homage to a youth of wealth
and privilege to a shockingly personal expressionist piece to finally a triumph of visceral abstraction,
an hour-long performance that more or less rivets its audiences and carries them through the hairpin turns
Baldwin lays out connecting a complex and disparate set of references and sources... From the show's opening,
with its elegant full bodied movement the piece moves away from formalism to a more evocative vocabulary."
Jeremy M. Barker, Culturebot
"Baldwin loves to be mysterious, and she has gotten quite good at it... [Peggy] ranges wide and free
in this performance, but it never strays... each scene feels right in itself and ends just in time for
the next to begin... Nonsense and physical comedy are the rule, but the rule can be broken at any time,
for a somber break or a violent episode... sonic range, from tiny gibber to violent boom, represents the
scope of the piece well, too, with light humor and heavy darkness vying."
Quinn Batson, Offoffoff.com
