Kei Takei's Moving Earth Orient Sphere. - La Mama E.T.C., New York, NY - dance reviews

Dance Magazine, Nov, 1996 by Rose Anne Thom

REVIEWED BYROSE ANNE THOM

In the most compelling sections of Kei Takei's Light series, which she began choreographing in the early 1970s, elemental human experience is evoked. The stunning simplicity of Takei's imagination reveals itself in basic rhythmic activity--tromping, falling, crawling--always rooted in the earth. With blanched costumes and white props--rice, beans, jigsaw-puzzle floorboards, or branches--the primitive and the surreal collide. By the late eighties, Takei's work had lost some of its poetic power, and the repetition that propelled her rituals often became relentless instead of mesmerizing. In 1992 Takei returned to her native Japan after twenty-five years in New York City. Her current company, with the exception of Laz Brezer and herself, is a new one.

The pieces that Takei and her collaborator, the scenographer Tetsu Maeda brought to La MaMa reveal glimpses of the affinity for natural phenomena that distinguishes Takei's finest works. In the beginning of Time Diary (Nakaniwa) two little boys tear unabashedly about the space scattering dried leaves from two large bags and then spend a large part of the dance meticulously gathering the leaves and putting them into a large box. At the piece's conclusion, after Takei has recited a poem about her genesis as a choreographer, which is related to autumn leaves, she steps slowly upstage, drawn into the lush greenery of a backdrop projection. The implication is that in the dying leaves she found fecund creativity. Framed by the opening and this conclusion, the process of making dances is implied in the isolation and interaction of the ten dancers. Costumed in layers of padded and twisted fabric that distort their shapes, and carrying weighted bags, they are tossed as randomly as leaves. Their connections to one another are tortuous as they yank at the uncomfortable skin of their costumes and then tangle with each other over portions of the fabric.

For Empyrean Passage (Light, Par, 31), a premiere, Maeda has hung huge blocks of ice on the perimeter of the performing space. Under the heat of the stage lights, the ice melts into tin buckets, providing an aural backdrop that complements Yukio Tsoli's score. The dancers travel slowly about the stage, some occasionally breaking into a recognizable classroom phrase while others dance with large white balls. Takei and Brezer, at a central platform, alternate a ritual in which they swing their arms front and back as though they were frantically racing. Although there are provocative images, there is no cumulative effect. When the platform is elevated, creating an image of falling water, its relation to the activity of the dancers is unclear. In the end, it is the ice that fires the imagination.

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Don't believe a word of choreographer Daniel Catanach's program note stating that he doesn't create to entertain. Mambo, an eight-part premiere that closed Catanach Ballet Theater's program at the Harry De Jur Playhouse (shared with Amiel Malale Dance, July 18-21, 1996) proved to be brazenly entertaining. Titles like "Acid" and Espiritu Libre" identify the dances in this bright suite that he sets to a rainbow of Latino dance music tracks (from Lumbre del Sol to Ray Barretto). Catanach's choreography, fluent to the point of ranginess, swirls all over the map--from salsa to showy ballet business. His dancers, from ex-Dance Theatre of Harlem and New York City Ballet performers to endearingly green apprentices, hold nothing back Even Catanach's slightly awkward moves, and the fancy ones his less experienced dancers nearly miss, enrich the looping force of his tear through mambo upon mambo.

Robert Greskovic

Imagine a tutu constructed of a single sheet of thick, transparent plastic, decorated with minispeakers, transmitters microphones, and wires, and you'll have a picture of Audio Ballerinas and Electronic Guys. Die Audio Gruppe (The Kitchen, July 10-13, 1996) explores the interaction of movement and sound by having the sound apparatus attached to the performers, who control it directly. The company consists of two men, in tuxedos, and two women, in black leotards, sneakers, and plastic tutus. All are wired from fingertips to derrieres so that the accompaniment to a performer's port de bras derives, say from the dancer's twisting a few switches on her tutu or pressing a few knobs on his lapel. In addition, the path described by the women's arms in space often determines the volume or the pitch of a sound. In the seven brief pieces that Die Audio Gruppe performed, several moments transcended trickery, revealing what the company might do once their artistic and technological visions are more finely synchronized.

Rose Anne Thom