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[DANCE REVIEW] Danish Dance Theatre at Jacob's Pillow

7.29.06
JACOB'S PILLOW DANCE
Danish Dance Theatre
Doris Duke Studio Theatre
July 27-30, 2006

PROGRAM:
Silent Steps
Kridt

review by SETH ROGOVOY, critic-at-large, BERKSHIRE LIVING magazine

(Becket, Mass., July 28, 2006) -- Every summer a certain motif seems to run through many of the dances at Jacob's Pillow like a gestural virus. Last year, for example, many companies drew on animal-like movements for their choreography. This summer, the meme seems to be the spastic twitch, the uncontrollable urge, the sudden collapse.

We've seen those gestures several times so far this summer, and we see them again utilized by the Danish Dance Theatre, to both comic and tragic effect, in the two dances on this week's program. In Silent Steps, a bright, light, mostly fast number, the lack of muscular coordination stands in stark, ironic contrast to the severe control of classical dance and to that of J.S. Bach's Harpsichord Concertos to which the piece is danced. In Kridt, however, the physical Tourette's is symptom of decay and death.

It's a tribute to Danish Dance Theatre, choreographer Tim Rushton, and his corp of fabulous, gorgeous dancers, that both uses of this state-of-the-art mimicry are original and compelling.

Silent Steps, of which we see just excerpts (presumably about half the full-length dance), is something of a mating ritual. Four women appear center stage, in a white rectangle in the middle of the black stage. We see them from our seats and also from above, their images projected on a video screen on the back wall. They find tutu-like skirts in the white box, put them on, and become possessed by the spirit of play and dance. Yet they are constantly undermined by gravity, seemingly pulled to the floor by a powerful force that overcomes their desire to leap and fly. Even when joined by their male partners, even when flaunting their considerable sexual attractiveness, all smiles and come-ons, they all wind up scooting along the floor on their knees, or crabwalking in reverse. They try to show off for each other, they posture, yet they are literally brought down to earth by a power too great. Somehow, it's tender and not tragic, more realistic than pessimistic, more a comment on the nature of relationships than the limits of human dynamism.

Kridt, on the other hand, is a dark piece -- literally and figuratively -- haunted by sickness and disease and death. A dancer lies on the stage, seemingly dead, while another dance draws a chalk shape around him like at a murder scene. The dancer comes to life, but in doing so, scoots along the floor, erasing a phrase from the Book of Kohelet (Ecclesiastes) that is chalked right on the stage. A similar phrase is chalked on the back wall, graffiti-style. The figure interacts with other dancers, dressed stylishly in contemporary, punk-style outfits that they struggle to doff (and sometimes succeed). Peteris Vasks's "Musica Adventus" is a lovely piece of contemporary chamber music, haunting, haunted, occasionally dissonant, and the polar opposite of the Bach from the first dance (in the same way that the dancers are polar opposites in their characters in this dance). The piece builds to a frenzy, and the music even moves backwards at one point (and so do the dancers), before the original dancer, whose life now seemingly exhausted, is lifted up and offered to a ray of light, transcending the decay as the physical becomes spiritual.

A beautiful program, with beautiful music, and beautiful dancers.

--
review by SETH ROGOVOY, critic-at-large, BERKSHIRE LIVING magazine







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