October 1–8, 1998
reviews|dance

Bamonte/Bazell/Rainey
Philadelphia Dances at UArts Dance Theater, Sept. 24-26

Karen Bamonte may be on a one-year sabbatical, but her appearance as one of three featured choreographers in last week's Philadelphia Dances program proved she's as lithe and commanding a stage presence as ever.
She offered three solos, all excerpts from previously seen work. With Losing Your Loop she drew parallels between a film reel gone haywire and the nature of human experience. Unlike much of Bamonte's other work, which sometimes tends toward obtuseness, this one spells out its intent—perhaps too much for its own good.

In her splendid excerpt from Difficult Loves, Bamonte wore a dress designed by Althea Unrath made from many layers of fabric. These were wrapped together and held up, it seemed, only by Bamonte's arm stretched across her breastbone—as if her body would be laid bare if she let the arm drop. Via voiceover, Bamonte spoke a poetic litany of small everyday occurrences suggestive of loss and abandonment. Meanwhile, she lifted and wrapped the layers of the dress to reveal its many shades and textures, invoking the smoldering emotions of relationships gone awry. In Avondale, Bamonte wore a black dress and danced to a folksy account of a coal mine fire in 1869 that took the lives of 110 people. However, movement and content didn't connect as directly here as in the other two solos.

Myra Bazell presented a reworking of Trapture, a piece premiered last winter and reprised at this year's Fringe Festival. Trapture plays out a dreamy scenario of a woman torn between two lovers—a man and a woman—both of whom simultaneously stimulate and torment her. A cast of nine dancers gamely performs on three pipe grids as well as the stage floor. Trapture has clearly benefited from Bazell having the opportunity to stand back and reexamine it. It's better focused, the dancers show greater ease in their roles, and it's much more primal and sexually explicit. I especially enjoyed the increased activity on the grids. Whether in solo or duo, performers created powerful imagery, concrete and abstract, to convey notions of sensuality, conflict and intimate exchange.

Two pieces by Meredith Rainey—100 Degrees in the Shade and In A State of Undress—featured this Pennsylvania Ballet star's trademark angular style of movement. In the former, Rainey and Portia Jones dance a humorous duet to a jazzy version of Fever in which their truncated ballet postures suggest they're both too hot and exhausted to go on—their legs go out, Rainey has trouble lifting Jones. It's fun to watch, but make no mistake, this required superb body control to pull off. In a State of Undress featured these two dancers plus James Ihde and Amanda Miller acting out a love square. They constantly trade off as partners, at times blending gender. Rainey smartly contrasted movement: when alone the dancers are largely strong and strident, but when they're paired they shift between positions of strength and moments of softness when one feels the need for another. It's about the push and pull of wanting to be with someone, but then again, maybe not. The dancing was first-rate and the choreographer's use of the stage was expansive and dynamic.
-Deni Kasrel