AMY ALT AND SHELDON B. SMITH
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It’s the kind of dance Amy Alt and Sheldon B. Smith do. Oh, they make use of costumes and music, but mostly to underline the movement. Take Dance for Two III, performed on their recent program at Link’s Hall: in this third version of a duet they’ve jointly choreographed and performed, Smith wears a three-piece suit, Alt a black dress with a white Peter Pan collar; the music is Vivaldi. But he isn’t wearing a shirt, and her dress is so short you can see the bicycle shorts underneathlike the costumes, the piece teasingly plays with formality, largely by contrasting rough, sometimes almost clumsy movement with the music’s elegant, ordered. phrases.
The feeling between these two is more friendly than romantic: in the opening they stand at right angles to each other, their gazes intersecting, not meeting. When Smith dips Alt back, she looks bewildered; when a phrase of his accelerates alarmingly, she gets spooked and bolts. In a way the dance is about their intersections, which look almost accidental–she falls, he falls on top of her. In fact Dance for Two III is often so rough it seems improvised, an on-the-spot response to the music (I found out later that the second half was improvised). Part of the pleasure is trying to guess who devised which movement: is Smith’s long phrase for arms and hands his own choreography or Alt’s witty exploitation of his spidery limbs? At any rate the way he flips up a palm somehow recalls an avian mating dance. The piece ends with a nice contrast to the music: during the last few bars of Vivaldi’s triumphal conclusion, Alt and Smith simply lie peacefully tangled on the floor, eyes closed, in a casual embrace that embodies friendship.
It isn’t as if all of 5 Line Sheave were suggestive or moving; there are stretches whose tedium comes into focus when it’s broken by more exciting, innovative movement, such as a dancer being hoisted and propped against the wall to scramble slowly against it like a moon walker freed from gravity. In fact all four pieces contain phrases and motions we’ve seen before, which can be deadly in “pure” dance. No worlds will open up if all we see are arms and legs in familiar, dancey motions. In the works in progress, these sections may be placeholders for more interesting movement to come. I hope so, because we need accomplished young choreographers and dancers–and these are accomplished indeed–to put themselves on the line. Otherwise no new worlds will be unleashed by a finger crooked or gaze shifted, by a drooping shoulder or lifted chest.
