Dance Review | ‘Palermo!’ Delivers a Fascinating, Beautiful, and Iconoclastic Performance

Intricate Choreography Packed with Scholarly Content and Social Commentary from Selah Dance Collective

By Jatila van der Veen Thu Jan 23, 2025 | 03:47pm

Jaw-dropping, spectacular dancing! Fascinating and intricate choreography! Diverse music and a program packed with scholarly content and social commentary! Meredith Ventura, choreographer, founder, and director of Selah Dance Collective, is nothing less than a choreographic genius.

There is so much to learn from the performance by Selah Dance Collective, starting with its name. My first thought was, What an unusual name for an American modern dance company! So, of course, I Googled it.

Choreographer Meredith Ventura | Photo: Courtesy

The term selah (סֶ֜לָה), is an old Hebrew word, meaning “to lift up or exalt.” It is found 71 times in the Psalms of King David. On the Selah website, the meaning is explained as “to stop and think, to pause and reflect on the meaningfulness of what comes next.”A fitting name for this visionary company, and, as I learned when I interviewed Ventura, she studied in Israel, and as she said, “Dialog becomes dance and provides keys to understanding the work as a whole.”

The show opened on the dark Center Stage Theater, with Ventura’s voice reciting a passage from a World War I satirical newspaper that was intended to entertain the troops in the trenches in that most bloody of wars: “Are you a victim to optimism? You don’t know? Ask yourself the following questions: Do you suffer from cheerfulness? Do you wake up in the morning thinking that all is going well for the allies? … If your answer is ‘yes’ to any of these questions, then you are in the clutches of that dread disease.”

After the opening reading, the lights came up on the company dressed in trench coats, shades, and head scarves, dancing to a tango-sounding version of the famous “Habanera” from Georges Bizet’s 1875 opera Carmen, called (ominously) “Carmen’s Shadow.” And so the show proceeded, interleaving dialog and music, exploring questions of beauty, what it means to be female, and challenging stereotypes.

The term “iconoclastic” comes to mind, because Ventura breaks barriers and smashes images and social norms, particularly regarding what it means to be feminine and beautiful. Yet, her iconoclasm is embedded in humor, graceful choreography, and subtle winks and intimate glances toward the audience. She is a gentle iconoclast.

Said Ventura, “Am I really breaking barriers? Or just revealing that the barriers were not really there?”

The preview piece, “Girlish,” explores what it means to be a girl in today’s society. Ventura wrote in the program notes, “This piece strives to capture … the whimsical rollercoaster of desires … and playful mysteries of the female archetype.”

Female archetypes, explained Ventura, include women who were tortured and/or martyred to teach us all, but especially male heroes, a lesson. Examples include Giselle, in the eponymous ballet, whose death is meant to teach the male hero, Count Albrecht, a lesson. More grotesque references to female saints include St. Agatha, whose martyrdom is celebrated in Italy and Spain by eating round white buns with a cherry on top (visualize this feminine symbolism!), and St. Rosalia, Patron Saint of Palermo, whose bones were scattered to ward off the plague.

Ventura asks, “How do we use women’s death to teach the hero a lesson?”

Opening number of Palermo! Selah company dancers | Photo: Jatila van der Veen

In a sarcastic and charming duet, “Impossible Conversation,” danced by the smallest and tallest dancers, Hailey Maynard and Fenna Roukema, respectively, to Vogue magazine’s dialogue “Ugly Chic,” Ventura further explores dialog-as-dance, in this unlikely dialog between fashion designers Prada and Schiaparelli about what it means to be beautiful in modern society.

“Ah, Beauty. I remember my mother used to say to my sister that she was beautiful and I was ugly,” said Schiaparelli. “All my life is working against the cliché of beauty … and the obligation of being sexy, of being beautiful. And I have nothing against being beautiful and sexy, but I like when it is a choice.”

The dialog ends with the question, “What is globalization?” Said Ventura, “Is it funny? Or is it insidious, and we don’t know it is not funny, but we laugh anyway?”

In her PhD research, Ventura is exploring the use of the grotesque in 20th-century dance, and the influence of German choreographer Pina Bausch on 1920s and ‘30s cabaret. These early 20th-century overtones are evident in Ventura’s choices of music.

The soundscape that Ventura created for Palermo! is incredibly complex and varied, transporting the audience to different times and places, with surprising visualizations, all in the medium of contemporary dance. Where one might expect dance styles from ballroom, such as tango, rumba, swing, or jive, the audience was presented with the long, lanky extensions and floor work of contemporary dance which, nevertheless, perfectly hit all the stops and accents in every piece.

Selah Dance Collective | Photo: Meredith Ventura

And the dancers! Superlatives are not adequate to describe them. They were all spectacular, and Ventura’s ever-changing placement of dancers on the stage gave each one a chance to be front and center, thus allowing the audience time to take in each one’s visual impact. I love that the ages of the dancers span from 18 to 42, and a number of them have jobs in science and engineering. They dance with Selah because it is their passion.

Two of the most eye-catching company members are also affiliated with State Street Ballet: Brenna Chumacero, who recently played Clara in The Nutcracker and Princess Tsarevna in The Firebird (see my preview and review), and Arianna Hartanov, who is also assistant director of Selah.

I would be remiss if I did not mention the singular male dancer, Vietor Davis, who hails from The Dance Network. It was interesting to see him integrated completely into the choreography with all the women, even parading in a sequined dress and heels in the last number. There were times when he lifted women, and there were times when the women lifted him! Said Ventura, “It’s all in the leverage.”

Vietor Davis as Dick Cavett being silenced by Hailey Maynard, with Fenna Roukama looking on. | Photo: Jatila van der Veen

Davis had an appropriately humorous solo portraying the American comedian Dick Cavett, in which he lip-synched one of Cavett’s monologues from the 1970s: “…there are a lot of women in this country who feel like they are being pushed around, and they’ve become very vocal, and it’s called the Women’s Liberation Movement … and we have two representatives from that movement here tonight, so we can find out what the women are all upset about.”

This humorous monologue quickly turned to serious commentary, as the music that followed was the funeral-like “Chaconne in G minor” by Henry Purcell, overlain with a woman’s voice saying, “Dying is an art, like everything else.” The dramatic solo was movingly danced by Ashley Kohler with Vietor Davis, and the company.

Not to sit in sadness for too long, the Chaconne gave way to a humorous piece in which “Dick Cavett” tried to silence the women he invited onto his show, and they, in turn, silenced him!

And, oh, the brilliant choreography. I wondered, how did Ventura’s style evolve? I detected a significant influence from Jose Limon, with overtones of Alvin Ailey, and hints of the indomitable Judith Jamison. I asked Ventura who her mentors were, and she did mention Limon and Ailey (nailed it!), but she also named some of the luminaries in the Dance Department at UCSB, including Delilah Moseley, Mira Kingsley, and Nancy Colahan. She also named her grandfather, who came to the U.S. from Ireland, and had a studio in which he taught ballet, tap, and jazz, in which she grew up.

With BFA, MFA, and MA degrees to her name, Ventura is currently working on her PhD in Dance and Performance Studies at UCSB. Her research topic is the use of the grotesque in the 20th century, and the influence of early 20th-century cabaret on the politics and aesthetics of modern dance. She asks, “Why are we still killing people on stage and in the movies? Why does it always end in violence?”

The last piece, “Maybe This Time,” sung by Liza Minnelli in the musical Cabaret, explores — in a gentle way — the final act of violence. As dancer Ashley Kohler lip-synched with the song, the rest of the company, dressed in glittering gowns, walked around her, throwing flowers at her — literally pelting her with flowers! — as she defiantly sang, “Maybe this time, for the first time, love won’t hurry away.”

There is so much to unpack in this performance of Palermo! that I wish I could watch it many times to pick up more of the nuances. I can definitely envision this piece being a focus of analysis in graduate performance studies. I look forward to many more performances of the Selah Dance Collective. Congratulations to (almost) Dr. Meredith Ventura, on a spectacular and fascinating show.

You can keep up with Selah’s upcoming performances and events on their website, selahdancecollective.com.