Saturday, November 18, 1995

Scrap premiers with fresh, surreal images

By Miriam Seidel
FOR THE INQUIRER
Scrap, the new performance group, is well-named. Its five members, all independent choreographers, project a scrappy, down-and-dirty approach to movement theater, and their big premiere work, Scrap, in a weekend run at the Arts Bank, is a crazy-quilt of movement ideas.

Alya Howe's Trees began the program, with Katharine Livingston, Myra Bazell and guest Trina Collins playing trees in long bark-print skirts. As they gravely bent and shuddered to imaginary winds on Thursday, opening night, the piece moved perilously close to stereotypical grade-school choreography. Fortunately, their final deaths at human hands upped the thematic ante.

The longer work, Scrap, threw in, not the kitchen sink, but -- dangling from the ceiling -- a washing machine, from which a dancer emerged in a cloud of feathers. The piece abounded in such fresh, surreal images. Bazell was a formidably androgynous presence, with buzz cut, muscles, angels' wings, and a wand.

Eric Schoefer danced a jig wearing a fire-engine red dress, surrounded by four sword-wielding women. Livingston chomped an oversized apple after doing a vamping shimmy, and Darla Stanley's manic moves played nicely off a slow-motion retreat by the rest of the dancers (a total of 11). If it was disjointed -- the downside of choreographic democracy -- the piece steamed along on the energy of a collaborative process.