DOUG ELKINS DANCE COMPANY
But being controlled from the outside isn’t always pleasant or ecstatic. In The Patrooka Variations one man passes his hand like a magic wand over another man lying down, making each body part writhe in turn, then mimes spitting on him. In an earlier section, a quartet performed on two chairs, one dancer sits in another’s lap and his or her hands are grabbed, arms manipulated–it’s sexual in an icky kind of way. Flamenco’s antagonistic sexuality–near the end of The Patrooka Variations a man pulls a woman’s head back sharply by the hair–also suits Elkins’s subtheme, the creepy excitement of being manipulated, controlled from the outside. (I assume the word “patrooka” is a goofy take on “Petrushka,” the puppet character from Fokine’s ballet.)
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Elkins drops parody in the third section, again danced to Handel–unless he’s parodying the Paul Taylor of Esplanade, which this section strongly resembles, with its simple runs, drops to the floor, and shifts in direction. There’s a bleakness, a despairing undertone to More Wine that may come partly from the parody: maybe Elkins, like other young people, is afflicted by the sense that older generations have somehow used up all the resources. At any rate, a despairing edge reappears in the final section, danced to a druggy Led Zeppelin wall of noise. Here the dancers’ break-dance spins on the floor are arrested, frozen into pretzel shapes that emphasize the form’s contortions, not its energy.
