CHANCE DANCE FEST
Eisen achieves his effects by stripping the choreography down to its essentials–rhythm, form, energy–and manipulating their cousins: time, space, and light. Actually, it’s by not manipulating time and light that he creates some wondrous effects. For example: the lights are off as the audience enters Link’s Hall. Eisen likes the lingering twilights of August, the way the light filters through the windows and reflects off the polished hardwood floor. Time seems to move slowly–as slowly as the sun sets.
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Fluid Measure Performance Company and Friends improvised a dance for the second half of the evening that underscored how difficult it is to achieve this simple spontaneity. (Eisen shares the bill with different performers each week.) Improvisation demands that the performers empty their minds and communicate with one another on a very visceral level. When that doesn’t happen, as was the case here, the dance plods along in a sad way. For all their experience onstage, these five dancers–Fluid Measure’s Kathleen Maltese and Donna Mandel and “friends” Ron Bieganski, Kay Wendt LaSota, and Cynthia Reid–just couldn’t get it together for this performance.
