DANCE EVANSTON ’93
The one who remained well within traditional jazz territory was Giordano company member Joseph C. Mann. His solo, Little Earthquakes, uses pop music (by Tori Amos) and a highly dramatic, athletic technique to communicate heartbreak. A single bare light bulb hanging stage center sets the mood, revealing Mann at first only in silhouette, his back to us, arms wrapped around his waist, “jazz hands” like starfish jutting from his sides. The body rippling up represents longing; convulsions mean despair. Mann is a terrific dancer in this style, taut and tense, but does it make sense to express romantic anguish with a bounding stag leap into the air, then a crash to the floor? Dance like this seems to me technique masquerading as emotion, and as a result the sexuality embodied comes across as luridly solipsistic.
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Like 4 on a Clarinet, Kelly’s Untitled Duet takes a little while to get going, but eventually all the dance’s hard edges are smoothed away: the opening lifts and catches, the supported fish dives–essentially one bit of athletic partnering after another, without a context or meaning–are replaced by serene solos, each dancer dancing for the benefit of the other. Meanwhile the score–a woman’s gorgeous singing in the third movement of Henryk Gorecki’s Third Symphony, A Symphony of Sorrowful Songs–cycles hypnotically, drawing us into the dance’s melancholy.
