NEW DANCES ’88
A dance concert, like a good meal, is ephemeral, meant to be consumed at a sitting. Like a gourmet meal it relies on established traditions, and often it’s made up of several courses. But the goal of a meal is satiety, while a dance concert–especially a concert like “New Dances ’88”–often whets the appetite for more.
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There’s a fascination in the dancer moving without volition–who seems to be activated by light, or sound, or electric current–and that’s what Wired exploits. Dancers are always talking about being centered, about an impulse that comes from within, but here the impulse is external. As we hear a radio being switched from station to station, the dancers act out whatever signal’s being received: they jiggle to the static, tango to Latino music, act out the sound effects of chomping and belching. And however alienating it sounds, the piece does draw the audience in–when we’re splashed with a dancer’s handheld spotlight, for example, or when in a sympathetic moment both dancers understandably collapse, then are reactivated. It’s funny, weird, frightening, and surprisingly human high-voltage material, brief and limited by its nature, but effective.
In a couple of works on this program, the dancing rather than the choreography stood out. Tunisia, choreographed by Ron De Jesus and danced by Christine Carrillo and Kevin Ware, is overtly romantic and dramatic, emphasizing the woman’s smallness and the man’s power, in a style that seems old-fashioned and even operatic. Their feelings are supposed to be intense, often sexual, but the style of the dancing and the choreography, which are both formal, subverts any true sense of abandon: this was the most balletic dancing of the evening. In one instance the woman caresses the man, but symmetrically and methodically, first one arm, then the other, then his chest. Surprisingly, the opening portion, performed in silence, is more intense than the latter, performed to Bloch’s Concerto Grosso no. 1.
Physically Ernst and Watson are a good team–almost the same size and so a little androgynous, although given Ernst’s smoothness and Watson’s angularity, you’d never really confuse the two. Especially in the second half of Color, their work together is particularly intimate, like a married couple who take cues from each other without knowing it. It all seems to evolve, it’s intuitive, and it’s often humorous as when they dance a kind of sailor’s hornpipe twined together. They manipulate each other–heads mostly–in swirling circular motions that never actually touch, or force, the other.
