ZEPHYR DANCE ENSEMBLE
and CONVERGENCE DANCERS AND MUSICIANS at Wilbur Wright College, October 29 and 30
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Lyn’s idea is to put musicians onstage and have them interact with the dancers–not exactly original, but her classically trained company, Convergence Dancers and Musicians, is a pleasure to watch when they have good pieces to perform. Lyn’s idea can be taken too literally, however, as Gray Veredon does in You Are the Music While the Music Lasts. Each dancer embodies an instrument: she may tuck herself between the legs of a cellist, hiding behind his cello, or carry the violinist as he plays. These are clever ideas, but Veredon doesn’t develop them. Each section turns into noodling, both musically and choreographically, and then is abruptly cut off. Only an ensemble section at the end shows what could have been achieved, but it too is suddenly cut short.
Satan in Goray, created by Polish Dance Theatre, is a better piece. It barrels through its story, based on the Isaac Bashevis Singer novel of the same name, about Satan seducing a woman in a Polish shtetl. The dance takes us through all the steps: the woman’s squeezing desire when Satan is near, her revulsion the next morning, her neighbors’ fears of succumbing to desire themselves, and Satan’s eventual victory. Choreographer Ewa Wycichowska’s movement is telegraphically simple yet still danced rather than mimed; desire is shown as a sudden contraction of the gut with clenched fists and taut neck tendons. Krzysztof Knittel’s music is excellent, driving the action forward without becoming a simple sound track. The dance’s fearful fascination with sex seems characteristic of a repressive society, marking this piece as Polish rather than American, as does the expressionistic stage design of Roman Wozniak. The dancers and musicians perform well; I swear I could see Satan’s eyes glittering.
Carpenter describes the hell in which he actually lives in two dances built around blisteringly angry political speeches. In the speech in When I Say That I’m Queer Does It Frighten You?, from David Wojnarowicz’s Close to the Knives, a man discovers that he’s HIV-positive and fantasizes about dipping a blow dart in his infected blood and shooting it into the exposed necks of politicians. The screaming text in Amen Baby, from an anonymous pamphlet, directs straights not to show any more baby pictures around until TV commercials show gay couples shopping at the supermarket. Both dances are effective settings of powerful speeches.
