SANDRA KAUFMANN
The most refreshing aspect of Kaufmann’s dances is their purity: they seem grounded in a strong faith in the goodness of human beings, something missing from a lot of dance and theater lately. Her dancers are strong spirited and beautiful people. If there’s any conflict, it comes from without–rarely from within. Thus the performers become archetypal characters in symbolic confrontations. In the right hands this approach might convey some deeper truths, but unfortunately the dancers in this performance merely played emotional surfaces, and too often the dances themselves were melodramatic to the point of seeming silly.
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The same idea of ritualistic initiation is played out in Bloodmoon, the last piece, with far less success. Sarah Hall plays a young maiden on a beach, arms wrapped in a large red cloth. Enter Stephanie Clemens, dancing the role of an older, wiser woman. Using a lot of circular movements and outstretched arms, Clemens and a troupe of six women initiate the maiden in the rites of womanhood. Some of the symbolic movements are too obvious, as when Clemens steals the red cloth and dances with it. Others, such as waving arms over Hall’s body now on the ground wrapped in the cloth, feel too much like a child playing witch to carry any weight.
