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Smith’s solo Scatterbrain builds phrases of increasing length and complexity from very simple movement material: his arm thrown across his body, his body thrown to the floor, galumphing hops, high leaps with straight legs and flexed feet, great arcing entrances, straight-line exits, and gestures suggesting exhaustion, puzzlement, and frustration.
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Both Scatterbrain and Smith’s new work, Amelia, are set to music by Radon Daughters, Smith’s own one-man band. In both works, the relationship of music and movement is reciprocal: sometimes the dancers seem to follow the score’s dictates; at other times, they forge ahead and the score lags behind. Amelia begins with four dancers–Lezlee Crawford, Cindy Helfand, Bryan Saner, and Dennis Wise–crossing and recrossing the performance space in simple, uninflected walks punctuated by small jumps. Crawford and Helfand break from the pattern, two brief duets emerge and fade, trios form and dissipate. The dance moves in and out of unison at the speed of perception, as Smith toys with the possibilities of pairing and re-pairing, of phrases repeated at different tempi or danced along different, crisscrossing paths.
Haun’s new work, Endings, is a duet for Blackman and Tate set to a score by Michael Zerang. Endings contrasts taffylike movements of contraction and release in the upper body with angular limbs and quick, syncopated steps. Much of it suggests the influence of African dance–a certain hopping balance; the rocking pelvis, straight torso, and sharply bent elbows, one hand placed on the hip and the other on the head; a tilted torso, raised knee, and two quick stamps. One particular movement image recurs–two hands facing each other inches apart, fingers spread and taut, vibrating violently. It is not an image with a distinct or specific meaning. But although it lacks literal content, it does supply emotional content; it may suggest struggle, sobbing, throttling, or a grand mal seizure that wrenches the dancer to the floor, but the audience cannot remain unmoved. The dancers’ hands form an image of great, unspecified visceral strength, altered subtly with each repetition.
In Brown’s new dance, Bang!, set to a score by Jean-Michel Jarre, movement and music progress in one great convulsive crescendo. Bang! begins with a series of slow, tedious slides and seated spins that move the dancers on a huge diagonal across the stage; the dance builds relentlessly to impossibly fast chaines and high kicks before the dancers collapse and the lights fade.
