AMERICAN BALLET THEATRE
Both choreographer and dancers have made remarkable accommodations to unfamiliar forms in this new piece. Dove’s gone wild with pointe work, giving it to men as well as women, yet he’s integrated it surprisingly well with his reckless style of movement. And the nine ABT dancers who perform Serious Pleasures–Ethan Brown, Robert Conn, Christina Fagundes, Susan Jaffe, Carld Jonassaint, Lucette Katerndahl, Parrish Maynard, Keith Roberts, and Ashley Tuttle–take Dove’s ball and run with it, abandoning dignity and dignifying abandon.
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Serious Pleasures has several Dove trademarks. The movement alternates between pell-mell rushing and a slow, sustained, sensuous deliberation. (When the Ailey company performed Dove’s Episodes last spring, I thought of a rubber band pulled taut and snapped; but here the alternations reminded me of a cat’s predations, the rhythms of stalking and pouncing.) The dancers seem to come on to each other and to us, seducing with sinuous torsos, back- flung heads, and exposed throats; wide, sexually available second positions; and abandoned leaps, catches, and falls. Once again Dove makes use of women’s hair: all four ballerinas wear theirs loose, and it floats and swings in a way that’s both softening and dramatic.
Most interesting–and puzzling–were the middle sections. In “Demons of Light” the women dance one by one in an open doorway, lit from above by a single harsh light. They look like prostitutes offering their wares, and the movement reinforces that cliche: the women play with their hair, open their arms, circle their hips, bring their knees coyly and seductively together. There are no men onstage, and each woman seduces us by turn, then closes her door, moving in a mincing pas de bourree like a geisha. In “Angels of Darkness” the men dance seductively too–but with each other. (Here the music really pulsates; we can hear a heartbeat in it.) They touch each other’s eyes and chests, run their hands down their own thighs, and jump, grasping something into themselves as they thrust their hips forward.
