E-Mail This Article to a Friend Hearts adroop Monkeyhouse at the CMAC BY MARCIA B. SIEGEL

At no particular point during the intermission of Monkeyhouse’s performance at the Cambridge Multicultural Arts Center last Friday, a shower of paper hearts floated down from the balcony. No one paid any attention except one audience member, who scooped them all up and crushed them tenderly in her hand.

It was Valentine’s weekend, and Monkeyhouse was celebrating the annual love fest — in its own way, of course. Thoughts of amorous adventures seemed to render the zany trio more subdued than usual, but the show had all their usual trademarks and paraphernalia. The seven short dances and surrounding texts and costumes were a collaborative effort spearheaded by the group’s ringleader, Karen Krolak, with Amelia O’Dowd and Nicole Harris, and guest artist Catherine Beull.

Swathed in fabric, hats, and low-wattage lighting, they don’t immediately distinguish themselves as individuals, but they have developed a company style, if you can call the air of studied aimlessness a style. They seem determined to prevent us from reading their work literally, so most of their pieces have made-up or even unpronounceable titles, and the lyrics to accompanying songs drift from sense to spaciness. "I creep towards the exit, it seeps into me," goes one threnody.

Two white bundles of gauze were in place as the audience entered the space. You could figure out that these would turn out to be people in Hozh’q, the first piece on the program. But the bundles remained amorphous shapes until two mismatched arms poked out and twined together. I sank into a drowsy state. I didn’t expect anything to happen. There were words I didn’t make much sense of. A woman in a black ballet skirt and strapless metallic top stood over the bundles. At some point there seemed to be three arms, and then two of them were knitting on a long woollen thing. By the time it was over, another woman in a ballet skirt, white this time, had somehow freed herself from the bundles, but I didn’t know any more than I did at the beginning.

I suspect the diffidence, the underplaying, the blurring of what’s in plain sight is Monkeyhouse’s way of counteracting some more mundane tendencies. Besides the exceptional weirdness of their homemade costumes, they seem to have other skills in the housewifely tradition. Out in the lobby, there was a sale of striped woollen caps they’ve knitted while on tour. Their promotional materials are lovingly crafted, they like to have brunch with audience members, and I bet they’re good cooks.

After Hozh’q, the rest of the program was more palpable, but crucial linkages were still obscured or skimmed over. In Idolum/Invisible to the Eyes, Krolak did mock-seductive gestures wearing a floppy black hat and a piece of rust-colored tulle that was fastened around her chest and back and tacked together down the sides. When she moved, you saw tantalizing patches of skin, but nothing you shouldn’t have seen.

The Monkeyhouse women are sly feminists, luring the spectator on but simultaneously thwarting and mocking the voyeuristic transaction. In Clinquant, Amelia O’Dowd tells a story of a love affair gone wrong while wearing an extraordinary costume made of 35 men’s shirts. "Bedclothes," I thought, as she rolled and writhed in the rumpled, shapeless garment. On top, she had what turned out to be another shirt, this one fastened around her so that expanses of midriff were revealed as she got deeper into the messy romance.

Toward the end of the performance, the message got a little less muffled. In Ramfeezled, O’Dowd tried to follow an instructor on tape telling her how to get a man. As soon as she cranked up her body language to the maximum come-hither look, the tape would admonish her against going too far. She’d slant her pelvis out alluringly, then find out she’d better retract it and appear shy.

Finally, Nicole Harris shuffled out for her own piece, Chorophobia. For a while, she slumped in a chair. Then she put on a pair of tap shoes and reluctantly started a fast obbligato to a song I couldn’t get the drift of. She looked down all the time, and her short hair fell over her face. From a quiet start, she tapped louder and more forcefully, working up a mood. Then in one motion, she flung a last angry wallop of taps into the floor and slammed out of the space.