Dancefusion

Iron Gate Theater, 3701 Chestnut St., May 2

To mark its tenth anniversary, last Saturday Dancefusion presented an ambitious mixed program, the highlight of which was the world premiere of Anna Sokolow's Shadowed Sun. It was mixed in several senses, for it consisted of two parts: contemporary work, which (the Sokolow excepted) was only intermittently interesting, and reconstructions of important pieces by two eminent modern choreographers, Mary Anthony and Pauline Koner. These latter offered anyone interested in taking a longer view of American dance a rare opportunity to see the work staged, if under somewhat straitened conditions. I salute Gwendolyn Bye, artistic director of Dancefusion, for understanding the need to present such older work, and for getting the right people to assist her in staging it.

First, however, Shadowed Sun. Anna Sokolow has been active as a choreographer for no less than 60 years (she's 88 now), and continues to create dances for her company to this day. Her style was founded on Graham—she was a dancer in Graham's company in the 1930s—but over the intervening decades she has become somewhat eclectic. What was immediately striking about this newest piece was its concision. Her movement language has been honed to essentials, her phrases are short, and she achieves emotional power with a minimum of means. Along with brevity is gravity. Certain signature gestures—slowly moving the hand at chest height away from the body—have a weight that most postmodern choreographers either don't even attempt or else lack totally. An amazing survivor from the heroic modernist period, Sokolow continues to believe in the power of dance to explore our feelings and to move us deeply, and is not afraid to try.

Shadowed Sun is a duet about the difficulty people experience in making significant connections with others, but unlike some of her earlier works on this theme that were rather bleak (e.g., Rooms), Shadowed Sun seems finally to radiate a calm that may represent the distilled wisdom of age. This is the kind of calm that emerges from much reflection on experience and has nothing to do with either sentimentality or boredom. Sokolow had more than a little help from her friends: beautiful dancing by Suellen Haag and Joseph Cicala, a varied and affecting cello score by Tina Davidson, an effective lighting design by Fran Markey that featured projections of paintings by the surrealist Max Ernst, and a voiceover reading extracts from the poetry of Paul Eluard.

Mary Anthony's contribution to the program consisted of her brief 1947 solo The Wind, inspired by an e. e. cummings poem and danced poignantly by Gwendolyn Bye. Perhaps because of her long association with Jose Limon, Pauline Koner's Concertino (1955), in its rather stately dance vocabulary and handsome Renaissance costumes, was reminiscent of Limon's classic Moor's Pavane, even if it lacked the dramatic tension supplied by Othello. Here the matinee performance, especially the ensemble in the last movement, seemed a bit under-rehearsed, but overall the piece was a pleasure to see.

The rest of the concert consisted of work by and featuring the leading personalities of Dancefusion. Ms. Bye as choreographer was represented by the long, flat narrative ballet Christina's World (1993) that did not attain the lyricism that would have redeemed it; Suellen Haag's Egg Drop (1990) had amusing moments but would profit from considerable abridgment; and the same could be said of Stephen Welsh's Fractured Orbits (1996), which contained numerous clever athletic moves but seemed to finish twice, only to continue regardless. Based on this sample of its current work, Dancefusion might profit from the services of an outside dance intelligence who could help prune away some self-indulgence, thereby allowing the company's genuine choreographic and performing talent to shine all the more brightly.

-Robert Ackerman