DAVID PUSZH DANCE COMPANY AND HEARSAY
Surrounded by domestic violence, a child discovers old movies and escapes to a fantasy world “forever at the mercy of [her] remote control.” As a teenager she creates an alter ego, also called Etta Blue, a B-movie composite with a host of imaginary lovers–the gangster Louie, tough Scab, and a Fred Astaire look-alike. As an adult, she finds all three lovers in Stan, a man who dances with her in the Dominick’s produce department: fantasy and reality blur.
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Fantasy and reality blur onstage too: dance sequences and staged movie excerpts punctuate the onstage action and expository monologues. When the fantasy elements succeed, they do more than illustrate. One pas de deux for Stan and Etta, danced by Brian Jeffery and Winifred Haun, is both fantasy and prophecy: the dance reflects the obvious miscommunication occurring downstage but also prefigures Stan’s proposal and Etta’s later nightmare. Fantasy and reality interpenetrate when Stan does propose: Ted Koch and Cathy Schenkelberg meld the diction and physicality of the “real” Stan and Etta with the harsh voices and Brooklyn accents of their fantasy counterparts, Scab and the Etta Blue alter ego, in an earlier scene.
The choreography is trite: flashy ports de bras and extensions, dizzying chaine turns, and fixed smiles. The men are always out of step, a fraction of a count behind, or on the verge of collapse: an apt comment on the state of dancing in community theaters and opera houses alike. By setting this parody to a Jacques Brel score, O’Slynne takes a poke at musical-theater performers and directors: to them Brel is “art”; Gershwin is “entertainment.” And the animal-headed kiddie swim-rings around the performers’ waists? No doubt both a slap at cheap production values and another example of O’Slynne’s insatiable appetite for kitsch.
Puszczewicz’s Not While I’m Around is lean and elegant; performed by Laura Elena Haney and Joseph C. Mann, the dance is as much a matter of shape and line as of romance. Neither the dance nor the Sondheim score is cloying: the lifts are plain, linear; the dancers mirror each other in balances and extensions, support each other in turn, move in unison. Yet ultimately, his is the active role: he raises her from her curling crouch, lowers her to his lap, supports her as she stands. Not While I’m Around closes with an embrace that melts into a two-step, evoking the images of gender inherent in social dancing and our culture.
