Light. - Joyce Theater, New York, New York - dance reviews

Dance Magazine, Jan, 1994 by Molly McQuade

What explains the slightly vile seduction of Balkan music and dancing? Sneakiness and furor in the rhythms. Cruelty, pleasure, and pride in the body. The aura of gansters, threats, moonless dark, rough work, rank tobacco. Especially when the men of Aman assembled--part farmer, part fugitive, part con, and part drum--to perform pieces heady with their Gypsy, Slavic, Turkish, or Albanian origins, it seemed time to give up being whoever I am for a nationality of greater ruthlessness--and more fun.

But Aman is based in Los Angeles, not Bucharest, and the company's occasionally vampyric charm is theatrical, mainly. They do such a good job, though, that you forget. True, the women generally get rather dull, passive roles and tend to simper in them. Partnering, while competent, conveys little feeling. And at times dances seem overchoreographed, with some of their innate wildness confined by the stage. But the extensive program of twelve dances and musical numb4ers showed Aman's breadth in its reach across many countries, Balkan and otherwise. The company also celebrated its thirtieth anniversary by unveiling Light, a commissioned piece by Laura Dean, whose style, oddly enough, suits Aman's.

What is that style? Adaptable to many traditions, but firmly rhythmic in most of what I saw; interested in interplay between musicians and dancers, who sahred the stage; vividly costumed, yet not self-consciously so. And despite the gestural revelry of dances with their stamping, clapping, steepping, jumping, and more, Aman was usually unmannered. The men who met up at the close of a dance from the eastern region of the Black Sea coast, for example, moved with a frontal, rugged minimalism, with intensely active footwiork and without sham temperament. The body said everything that needed saying.

In larger groups some of the distinctive power of the troupe wound down a little. This happened even in Light, which concluded the evening. Set to a score composed by the choreographer and John Zeretzke, Aman's music director, the dance, like its music, was anm eclectic gathering of Bulgarian, Turkish, African, and even Irish elements for the full company. Knitting ethnicity into her rhythmical fabric, Dean made the ensemble shift, shrink, and swell with the communal mysteries that are her characteristic. But strong simplicity sometimes gave way to a desire for elaboration, and the dance lost energy, too, in some rather unsubtle transitions. Still, Light was danced with conviction by Aman, at ease with the demands of a propulsive unison tha reached the audience in waves.