Modern LA Dance

Choreography and performance - Linda Lack
Performed September 8, 2007, Grand Performances, California Plaza, Los Angeles

Beautiful, Striking
A cat happily writhing around a stone lizard, a wolf with palsy, a demon wearing skin tight red with a provocative tail and a woman in a blind white mask were only a few of dancer Linda Lack's guises. In an evening devoted to modern dance. Her four pieces were interspersed with two other representatives of L.A-based modern dance.

Lack's evocative work vacillated between the hyper-literal and the esoteric. When she embodied cat and demon, her movement possessed strong narrative qualities and tested the boundary between animal and human, exploring how character becomes manifest in the world. As a wolf, in a mask, her presence personified bodily unease and emotional conflict.

- Rebecca Joly, LA Yoga

Local Movers
Linda Lack, Hae Kyung Lee and Bradley Michaud
Long before magical realism and gymnastic pretzel moves became ubiquitous in dance theatre, local choreographer/performer Linda Lack and her Two Snake Studio introduced Los Angeles audiences to an evocative brand of modern dance that conjured up a realm of mystical and semirealistic creatures, through her use of masks as well her liquid movement. Local dance stages have lacked Lack in recent years, but she's been lured back for a shared performance with Hae Kyung Lee and Bradley Michaud's METHOD, two other major forces on the local modern-dance scene. Lack's four works include two L.A. premieres.

- Ann Haskins , LA Weekly

A shared geography, but visions are worlds apart

The stylistic disparities of the three troupes in 'Modern Los Angeles Dances' is jarring, yet taken individually, their works are rewarding. By Lewis Segal Times Staff Writer Choreographer Bradley Michaud, Linda Lack and Hae Kyung Lee don't belong on the same program, but their clash of philosophies and styles gave an event titled "Modern Los Angeles Dances" an intense variety if not coherent as part of the free Grand Performances series at California Plaza on Saturday.

Presented in the relatively intimate Marina Pavilion - a circular, gazebo-like structure on the Olive Street side of the Watercourt - the performance showcased Lack in four guises. She first appeared in "Trans-Species" as a lizard-like creature slithering around and over a life-size recumbent sculpture by Diane Raymen. She then expired picturesquely in white fur during an excerpt from "Spirit Wolf" and donned devil-drag for Mea Culpa (It's) My Fault," presiding over video footage of the Iraq war, flinging money ($10,000 "hell Bank Notes") at the audience and lashing her long tail.

Her own face was visible only in "Ascent - I Will Not Be Sad in This World" (and then only briefly) as she jettisoned a sense of personal pain for the instant serenity gained from donning a Balinese mask. In style, these solos hark back to the gesture-based, theme-driven work of German modern dancer pioneer Mary Wigman, with technical display subordinated to characterization - though every so often, and especially in her contorted balances, you could appreciate Lack's exemplary suppleness and refinement.

- Lewis Segal, LA Times

So many ways for them to say L.A.
Three locally based choreographers will bring their wildly divergent visions to the stage for a join show. By Susan Joseph Special to the Times The creator of a yoga-based technique called "The Thinking Body - The Feeling Mind," Lack presents what she calls "masked dance rituals."

I don't make dance unless I have something to say, but there is something about a mask that makes my work more universal," she says. " The masks I wear represents characters I believe belong to every human being."

In her solo "Mea Culpa," for example, Lack wears a red demon mask that allows her to express her take on contemporary greed, lust, violence and apathy. " This is a terrible piece for me to perform," she says. "But when I put a mask on, the creature it represents dictates what I do."

At a recent informal showing of her solos at her La Cienega Boulevard studio, Lack demonstrated the energy and suppleness of a woman decades younger as she contorted, inverted, wriggled, slid and performed a number of other animalistic movements that clearly reflected her years of yoga practice.

Had I not developed my own technique, It wouldn't be humanly possibly for me me to perform today," she observes.

As a child, Lack also traveled extensively through Mexico and Central America, and "I found myself so drawn to depictions of a culture's concerns through masking and storytelling. I guess I felt that my culture had lost its rituals. So I wound up building my own."

- Susan Joseph, LA Times

Modern Los Angeles Dances
Grand Performances' executive and artistic director Michael Alexander created the evening of dance, featuring three very different SoCal choreographers: Linda Lack, a yoga and movement therapist whose solos are contemporary rituals; South Korean-born Hae Kyung Lee, whose work combines and explores the aesthetics and spirituality of her ancestors through a post-modern sensibility; and Bradley Michaud, whose off-center, risky style celebrates unbridled, high-velocity movement.

- Orange County Post