LAURI MACKLIN
Macklin’s a born soloist–her dancing has a cleanness, a precision, and at the same time an idiosyncratic rhythm that other dancers may find difficult to reproduce. In her recent concert at MoMing, I found Macklin’s solo–Labyrinth, a premiere–the most successful of the three dances on the program, not only because she’s the ideal interpreter of her own choreography, but because in this dance she seemed most herself.
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To a two-year-old trying to get dressed, a sweater is a labyrinth. The character Macklin portrays in Labyrinth has similar problems with her costume: at first it resembles a monk’s robes, draped in heavy folds around her neck, arms, and waist. But as the dance goes on, Macklin releases herself from the constricting folds around her neck (the fabric drops down and, swinging from her waist, becomes a skirt) to reveal one of the most tawdry leotard tops I’ve seen, all sequins and netting. This disrobing at first seems to offer the dancer release, but eventually (as in a dream one might gradually become aware of being naked in a crowd) she becomes embarrassed and self-conscious, gathering her heavy skirt into a big ball in front of her and finally slipping at least part of the fabric back over her head. (In a nice touch, Macklin doesn’t quite get the costume back on the way it was, just as one might accidentally put a sweater back on inside out or backwards.)
In The Scream, a 1984 movement theater piece (in its Chicago premiere), Macklin apparently abandons the mythic for the everyday and concrete: a day in the life of four female roommates. The piece opens with the four dancers (Macklin, Evans, Lisa Dershin, and Kathleen Maltese) in bed, each a brightly colored mound in its own four-poster (the set was designed by sculptor Dan Galemb). Suddenly Maltese lets out a piercing scream, sitting bolt upright in bed. The others pop up a split second later. She must be their alarm clock, for they all then get up, dress, and seem to go about their business in the outside world.
