Tennessee Dance Theatre. - Symphony Space, New York, New York - dance reviews

Dance Magazine, Feb, 1994 by Caroline Kahn

Tennessee Dance Theatre and Ballet Theatre Pennsylvania came to New York City with works that revealed a similarly standoffish attitude toward dance.

Beefed up by program notes, props, and plot, their performances illustrated the notion that actual choreography is an accessory - present, but not necessarily prominent. Dancemakers from both companies failed to bring forth either shape or meaning from movement, presumably the task at hand. Rather than emphasize dance values, these performances were meant to convey ideas, tell stories, and, finally, to entertain. Tennessee Dance Theatre achieved the last goal by celebrating its regional spirit, while Ballet Theatre Pennsylvania latched onto the tried-and-true Dracula myth.

The Tennessee company attempted to bring dance down home with Front Porch and Quilts (a premiere), both jointly choreographed by artistic directors Donna Rizzo and Andrew Krichels. Front Porch consists of six vignettes, each desperately trying to capture some quintessential life experience. Such an ambitious attempt is bound to fall into cliche Despite the elevated literary sources quoted in the program notes - Thomas Wolfe, Eudora Welty - the piece seems touched more by the kindred spirits of greeting cards and sentimental ballads.

For most of its length Front Porch gets by on its good intentions rather than its own true substance. The last section, though, finally asks movement to speak for itself. Rizzo, who is also the company's most compelling dancer, rattled and shook in frenzied agitation. She embodied the title, "Restless Me," and in deep concentration laid bare a network of frayed nerves.

But TDT is more interested in ideas for dances than in dance itself. Quilts, obviously a labor of love for the company, demonstrated this problem anew. The piece is an homage to quiltmakers and their work. Yet the intricacy and grace of quilting fails to transiate into choreography. Mike Reid, the Grammy Award-winning composer, provides the piece with heartfelt but empty song. His booming music overwhelms the dance and emphasizes its unsophisticated, tenuous structure. Quilts is at its best when the dancing turns toward abstraction. Only then can the work begin to suggest the metaphors of community embedded in this folk art.

Rather than warm the cockles of our hearts, Ballet Theatre Pennsylvania tried to awe us with the Broadway style of its extravaganza, Dracula. Directors of the company have rewritten the vampire tale from what they call a "female perspective." The Queen of the Undead, most distinguished for her menacing crown of hair, controls the night world while Dracula, her confused and mealy-fanged subject, struggles to choose between good and evil. The story, though, is incoherent and poorly realized, anchored solely by its familiar and alluring title.

An unclear plot can be easily over-looked if the dancing proves captivating, but artistic director Mary L. Hepner's choreography stagnates in a permanent state of prologue. Pointe shoes and arabesques, by themselves, don't say that much. Even the pas de deux between Dracula (Luis Bravo) and The innocent Natalya Charova), which provide the ballet with its most continuous stretches of dancing, lack imagination.

Dracula's choreography is academic, technically competent but poor in stage-proud confidence. Despite her lovely face and shapely form, Charova hurried from position to position, while I would have liked her to revel a bit in her own line. Most disappointing is the choreography for the Queen of the Undead, danced by Julie Levin. I'm reluctant to acknowledge a feminist revision of the story when the Queen is asked to do little more than wear pointe shoes and splay her legs.