Elements of Dance

A REMARKABLE group of dancers, musicians and light technicians, building on the truism that "Action of one medium influences events in another" (from the program notes), created an evening of high imagination, beauty, and sheer fun at the Ex this past weekend. It is an evening spent in playful search of the "Elements of Dance," as the performers title the first half of the program by allowing free play to the "Dance of the Elements"--the second half.

The thesis is summarized in the first piece, "Confrontation, or Getting Acquainted." The music, a sweet-flowing jazz, begins by swinging the dancers to its beat. Suddenly, the dancers have taken command over the instruments--dancer Scott Kemper slumps and the sax follows with a long nasal whine, much like the clown and his circus band.

The lighting has been a blanketing red or blue. Now, two spot lights flash onto the floor just ahead of the dancers (Scott Kemper, Lindsay Ann Crouse). The dancers beckon the light-dots backwards, and as the spots climb on to the backdrop, they become beach-balls, rolling along the shadows of dancers' extended arms or bouncing between the two. The spots free themselves, scurry around the room as the dancers desperately attempt to pounce back into the light now two dimensional again. This section ends, the dancers on their backs, legs pointing upwards, with the dots poised just above--inverted exclamation marks. In the last movement, "Arrival at Harmony," music, light and movement combine and complement each other for what are perhaps the most lyrical and most joyful moments of the evening.

But the dancers step back from such a premature synthesis in order to dissect again the whole in "A Day in the Light"--drums and light, gorgeous psychedelic slides, but no dancers; "Just the Same"--only music; and "Left, Right, Or Back and Forward"--for each piece is so carefully conceived and well executed it may stand confidently on its own as an artistic entity.

THE quality of the dancing shows best in "Jazz-Ballet, or a Tale of Two Styles." For this piece, quite literally a "Dance of the Elements," Miss Crouse portrays water to a very simple piano melody. Her movements, drawn mainly from classical ballet are exceedingly simple, she repeats them over and over. Mr. Kemper, as fire, uses the jazz idiom and, again, the choreography is almost childishly simple. Mr. Kemper and Miss Crouse have wisely avoided the temptation to demonstrate their ability with technically difficult movements. The success of the evening depends so entirely on the performers' ability to harmonize the three elements of sound, movement, and light that a flawed performance by any one would ruin the whole. And the dancers' execution, in the limited scope they have set themselves, is hard to fault. The attractiveness of these two dancers lies in their fine sense of timing, of rhythm, and in their gracefully controlled exuberance.

The lighting, by Bob Harlow and Sergio Modigliani (they are responsible, I suppose, both for the spots and the splendid slides) exhibits much the same winning qualities as does the dancing. The colors are lush, the patterns interesting, but success again depends on a very well-marked sense of timing and rhythm.

These are also the chief virtues of otherwise uninspiring music, mostly jazz, by Allen Radzow, Pete Salerno, Mike Starr, and Marc Kashnor.

In the last piece, "Epilogue, or having read the book," the program notes claim to show that "the final definition of dance is the ultimate freedom of the imagination." While this offering is the most amusing, and the most gimmicky (featuring a neon-lit strip-tease in which Miss Crouse and Mr. Kemper remove their white gloves, socks, and hairbands) it is also the most controlled. Lighting, movement and music are in close harmony, while forcing a consciousness of each medium individually as light is made to dance, dancers to glow, and the music plays to the dictates of either.

Perhaps the greatest shame of this production is that it has been seen by so few. The group should be offered every and any inducement to an encore.