The Dance Circle

Like most dance programs in the Boston Area, the Dance Circle's debut on Sunday afternoon gave us both technicians and masters, too many of the first, too few of the second. When modern dance truly comes of age, perhaps it will stop staging demonstrations of technique--called "experiments in motion"--and concentrate on the art of dance. Sunday's performance showed many dancers in perfect control of their bodies but only two who danced, Joyce Trisler and Robert Cohan.

Cohan once told a dance class at the Loeb that his most treasured compliment came from his young niece who ran up to him after a performance and told him Uncle Bob, I understood every word you said." One loses complete comprehension after childhood, but the beauty of Cohan's dance is still powerful and awesome; at the same time it is delightful. I have never seen a dancer change levels (move, for example, from an upright to a sitting position) with such sudden grace; guessing how he will rise to his feet again becomes an interesting game. And he never disappoints his audience by doing it unimaginatively.

Joyce Trisler, the other artist of the afternoon, danced several moods in her two pieces, "Journey" (her own choreography to the music of Charles Ives) and "Variations." The dancers' immobility of expression was, however, the greatest flaw in "Patterns," the first piece performed by the Dance Circle Company. Knowing when to smile is one mark of a dance artist. Merce Cunningham has it, and this is one of the joys of watching him dance. Miss Trisler showed it too, as she played and teased her way through "Variations."

The rest of the program was for the most part undistinguished. Erick Hawkins' "Early Floating"--an "exploration in the pure fact of movement," choreographed in silence--was merely a study and an exercise. As someone has so clearly said of nouelle vague films, why is it that these things are never too short? The patterns of bone and muscle in the dancers' bare legs were the most interesting part of the composition. When this is all that holds one's attention, what one is watching may be "exploration," but it is not dance.

The performances of Gus Solomons, Jr. and Jack Moore were uneven, having spots of brilliance, but the total effect was not captivating. Although Moore managed at a high point in "Songs Remembered" to make his running circles backward around the stage surprisingly exciting, some parts of his choreography, particularly in the love duet, were simply clinches.

Finally, the Dance Circle revived what they call "a modern classic", "The Shakers", choreographed in 1931 by the late Doris Humphrey. It could have been left unresuscitated; few would have missed it. Miss Humphrey evidently felt that the Shakers were frightfully boring people, who, as the program tells us, "believed they could shake themselves free of sin and did not believe in marriage." Her piece begins with a prayer meeting that is totally mechanical and unsubtle. Although some prayer meetings may fit this description they do not make good material for dance programs. What naturally results is incredibly obvious choreography laid out in straight lines and circles. The dance has outgrown these forms, and should know better by now which works of 1931 are classics and which primitives.