JAN BARTOSZEK AND DANCERS
You can get around that, of course, by making dances that look like other people’s or by avoiding personal subjects. Jan Bartoszek does neither, and with so much of this figurative nakedness in her dances, the impulse to cover up must be strong.
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One of the reasons Bartoszek is so good at personal subjects is her knack for making movement, however small or simple, suggest psychological states. In the woman’s opening solo, her turnout seems part of the sensual offering of herself. Hands are important: the drummers’ hands seem to caress as much as beat their instruments; the woman dancer’s hands fold, curl, and weave as craftily as the fanciest footwork. Later the dancers, their shadows cast onto the scrim, offer each other their hands and feet as if offering food; the percussionists meanwhile are “drinking,” with scooping motions, from their drums, turned over on the floor to make basins. Later still, the male dancer offers the woman his head; she catches it with the same scooping motion the percussionists had used to drink. To lovers, love is bread and water.
In the Home Of (1989) is both more naked and more obscure than Of Love and Shadows. This is a very personal dance (the program says it’s “for Nancy”) but totally unmediated. The movement motifs and the structure hint at a significance we can’t quite fathom. But there’s sufficient repetition of sufficiently provocative images for us to feel we’re getting a glimpse of Bartoszek’s private vision.
The I Depend on Tango, choreographed a year and a half ago in a workshop and refurbished for this concert, has been changed, or I’ve changed. At this viewing, the contrasts between movement that’s forcibly upright and movement that gives in to gravity were far more evident. Psychology seemed less important, humor far more. Of the eight dancers, Darryl Clark was particularly noticeable for his air of gleeful parody.
