Ben Munisteri. - P.S. 122, New York, New York - dance reviews

Dance Magazine, April, 1998 by Alice Naude

JANUARY 9-24, 1998 REVIEWED BY ALICE NAUDE

Ben Munisteri plays impresario to his own show, Late-Night Sugar Flight. With a microphone in hand and a comic, self-deprecating manner, he explains the experiment we're about to witness. It's a distillation of his own choreography ("taking out those parts of the dance where you think, `this is boring,'" he says) performed in eight movement sections to selections from Donizetti, the British band Cornershop, and Erik Satie. Munisteri and his dancers have been working on this piece for eleven months, performing to wide range of music. The experiment, he tells us, is coming to a close.

But as soon as it begins we see that his work has paid off. The choreography is beautifully evolved, with well-ordered phrases tightly worked so that seemingly simple movement becomes riveting. Munisteri combines club dancing with ballet class: a swagger here, a wiggle there. Attitude meets arabesque and the effect is sexy without becoming a gimmick.

The dancers all have their own distinct styles, and no two bodies look the same, so the eye is drawn from individual gestures to overall structures. Powerful duets feature Munisteri with Lisa Wheeler and Tricia Brouk. When it's over, Munisteri tells us the company will perform the same thing again, with the sections cut up and reordered, with dancers trading phrases, and with music improvised by deejays M.C. World Beat or Michael Hornburg, depending on which night you attend. The idea is something like a Merce Cunningham Event, but more playful. These dancers don't always ignore the music; sometimes they move with it. The improvisation engenders its own energy, and at its best moments Munisteri's project sparks with a feeling of discovery.

Letting us in on the experiment allows for more audience engagement than most performed improvisations. But the tip-off also reminds us that Munisteri is trying to work something out: something he doesn't want to call postmodernism and something he's clearly reluctant to present as a traditional concert. There's a restlessness about the show that keeps the dancing smart and fresh, yet Late-Night Sugar Flight is, in the end, curiously unsatisfying, like an exercise or a warm-up for another venture. If the next one builds on any of the commitment and intelligence of this project, it will be well worth catching.