Film Feedback
New This WeekAround TownMusicFilmArtTheaterNews & FeaturesFood & DrinkAstrology
  HOME
NEW THIS WEEK
EDITORS' PICKS
LISTINGS
NEWS & FEATURES
MUSIC
FILM
ART
BOOKS
THEATER
DANCE
TELEVISION
FOOD & DRINK
ARCHIVES
LETTERS
PERSONALS
CLASSIFIEDS
ADULT
ASTROLOGY
PHOENIX FORUM DOWNLOAD MP3s

  "> E-Mail This Article to a Friend
Memory bank
Anna Myer at the Tsai Center
BY MARCIA B. SIEGEL

At the start of Anna Myer’s new dance, Unlocking, a woman in a tiny, cream-colored satin nightie and matching biker shorts walks softly around, inscribing the space with cryptic arm gestures. Soon another woman appears, identically dressed in a dark color. The second woman seems to be the shadow of the first, copying her movements but maybe a breath later. They lie on the floor side by side, scootching down as if they were settling in to sleep. The dance that follows might be some half-recalled dream of theirs.

Unlocking, to a commissioned score by Dana Brayton, was the featured work of Myer’s program last weekend at the Tsai Center. The sponsor, FleetBoston Celebrity Series, designed the Boston Marquee to support local artists. Devoting a full evening to one choreographer’s work sends a message about the strength of a talent, and Myer’s sensibility came across as idiosyncratic but restrained. In addition to the commissioned dance, she premiered a new duet, The Presence of That Absence, and three pieces from the ’90s.

The dreamers in Unlocking were joined by three other women and three men, all dressed to match (costumes were by Jill Tibault), except that the men’s tops were gauze, and the choreographer, the last to enter, wore more-covered-up red pajamas. They sorted themselves into different formal groupings, using the same basic phrase material and adding some more active traveling, lifting, and jumping steps. Brayton’s score for an unusual ensemble of string trio, saxophone, and two marimbas created a pastoral, almost contemplative setting for the dancers’ airy, shifting patterns.

What contributed to the dreamlike atmosphere of the dance was that even though people worked closely together, touched and lifted each other, I never saw anyone make eye contact with a partner. This seems to be part of Myer’s style — it held true for the rest of the concert — and it gives her work an odd detachment. It’s as if the dancers were fingering through a vault of half-decayed memories, events that aren’t going to cause them pain anymore. At one point they were all posing in different shapes, and I thought of a sculpture gallery.

Two women again shadowed each other in The Presence of that Absence, again without making eye contact. Jennifer Polyocan and Liz Santoro, in long satin gowns of red and black, suggested some kind of forbidden liaison fraught with iconic signs. They danced a few steps of a tango. One reconnoitered the other as if looking for the opening to get in synch. They stepped deliberately on their toes in an embrace, one behind the other, like the Balanchinean references to the spellbound lovers Orpheus and Eurydice in Serenade and Cotillon.

All this was accompanied by the largo movement of Chopin’s Sonata for Cello and Piano (played by Andrew Christopher Mark and David Polan). When the music ended, on an inhale it seemed, as if getting ready to go on, the woman in red suddenly walked off and the dance was over.

Myer’s use of musical fragments and wildly butted-together musical styles can be disconcerting. Just when you think something will develop with the two women in the Chopin piece, or the faux ballet dancers (Bess Rouse and Rick Vigo) in the Duet from Quintet to Brahms (to the adagio from the G-major Violin Sonata, which was played by Polan and Geneviève Martineau), the music comes to an end.

Sometimes Myer’s choices are startling. Wine and Roses, for Rouse, Vigo, Polyocan, Linda Cedeno, and Frank Campisano, begins very formally to Bach, a four-note ground bass that marches up and down. Two of the women begin a duet with Bach’s first variation, but all of a sudden a chorus is singing Verdi, and the whole group start doing squats and handstands and melodramatic stabbing gestures.

This is as far as the group ever venture out of their formal composure. The Penguin Café Orchestra plays " Lie Back and Think of England, " a number with classical instrumentation and even a hint of Bach, that suddenly goes haywire. The dancers are too well-bred to get out of control, but they make goofy gestural references without losing their pattern: waving, embracing, despair, I’m the king, I’m a figure on a Greek vase. A weird note in the music triggers another change and the lights go out.

The program ended with Myer’s affectionate ramble for seven dancers partnering seven children, Bluebird No. 173, a piece no audience can possibly resist.

Issue Date: February 6 - 13, 2003
Back to the Dance table of contents.

  "> E-Mail This Article to a Friend

home | feedback | about the phoenix | find the phoenix | advertising info | privacy policy | the masthead | work for us

 © 2003 Phoenix Media Communications Group