George Piper Dances
First-rate companies and choreographers understand the language of contemporary culture as well as of dance. As two recent programs demonstrated, dance forms from modern to ballet can use TV and film references to help audiences notice how the world moves.
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It opened with William Forsythe’s 1984 quartet Steptext, set–if somewhat erratically–to a Bach chaconne. The piece begins in total silence as a single dancer moves into a spotlight, plants his feet, and does a solo with arms and torso alone. Suddenly a bar or two of music blares out, whereupon he stops dancing abruptly and walks off. In the silence that follows, a ballerina performs similarly constrained moves until she too is interrupted by the music–suddenly Bach has become the equivalent of the vaudeville hook, dragging performers off the stage. Eventually the music and dancing coincide, but still the movements contradict expectations. There’s the traditional prima ballerina but the “corps” consists of three men; they partner her expertly yet she always ends up oddly contorted, hooked over a knee or behind a hip instead of perched elegantly and traditionally on a shoulder. One man leaps Baryshnikov-style but in double time, so he looks like one of the Beatles in the time-lapse sequences of A Hard Day’s Night. The moves are funny and yet beautiful and gracefully executed. Nunn and Trevitt also engage in a series of identical maneuvers that might be outtakes from the Marx Brothers scene where Harpo mirrors Groucho’s moves. And whether or not you realize the men are folding and unfolding their arms in a parody of the Russian dancers in The Nutcracker, you can enjoy their classical virtuosity.
The Boyz’ work is so charming and so well-done that it seems churlish to complain about its lack of substance. But midway through each piece my attention began to fade, as the intellectual point had been made and no underlying emotion had emerged to sustain its repetition. This, too, may be a comment on conventional ballet, but it’s also a weakness of cerebral dance. Without passion, even sex is just repeated pounding.
The concept, dancing, and design are delightful–and, truth be told, stronger than the choreography. Fehrenkamp’s moves tend to be overliteral, so that swimming looks like swimming instead of a dancerly extrapolation of swimming. I salute her determination to be accessible, but she could probably trust her audience to grasp the story without all the underscoring. Still, as capably danced by Rachel Bunting, Mary Chorba, Lucy Vurisic-Riner, and Fehrenkamp herself, The Raft floats instead of sinking, displaying plenty of good-humored wit.
