ARTS . Dance Review

Bring the Pain

nEW festival review: Cie Herve-Gil / Melanie stewart Dance theatre, UArts Dance Theatre at the Drake, Jan. 28


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Published: Jan 30, 2007

Now in its third year, nEW Festival, curated by longtime Philly dance experimenter Melanie Stewart, is running into some of the same woes that plague other ongoing fetes, festivals and collectives. When everyone is under pressure to do something nEW, it's hard for the event not to seem a bit oLD; the need to innovate is exhausting. Both the Fringe Festival and DanceBoom have self-corrected to attack this problem.

Cie Herve-Gil is a French troupe, and founder Myriam Herve-Gil has performed with Stewart before. She usually is whimsical and intriguing, and maybe her "En Corps" — a nice French play on the word "body" as both personal and signifying a group of dancers — will be those things someday. But right now it's simply a very short work in progress with two dancers clutching various tender body parts (knees, back and so on) while seven other ladies (lots of body types, tall, short, plump, skinny) stand and sit as something of an odd corps de ballet. Meanwhile there is French voiceover, and — except for catching a few bonjours and encores — I have no idea what was said.

Stewart's own contribution to nEW was "A Simple Case of Pain...," which is, as the name clearly states, a movement take on pain, a topic that doesn't exactly scream dance. In this case, the pain comes from evil hypocrisy, nasty old lust, plus "secret agents of consumerism" and more, but you get the idea. She uses three of the best dancers around — Meghan Durham, Bethany Formica and Janet Pilla — and these ladies give their all, which is a very great deal, to this saga.

The trio doesn't so much dance as tangle, roll and tumble around the stage. The score is punctuated by percussive sounds, and when these break out, Bam! one of them falls down, shot dead, then the next, and so on. The leitmotif of this extended meditation on personal angst ("I wonder what it means to be happy") is a playful rendition of "My Favorite Things," in which the light-hearted Sound of Music recital of raindrops on roses and so forth is transformed into despair. The problem with all the pill-popping and spitting up is that after a while it's not a tragedy, it's repetitious.

However, Stewart doesn't set a piece, as choreographers usually say. She explores, tinkers and mulls things over. So "Pain" likely will be nEWER soon.

Cie Herve-Gil/Melanie stewart Dance theatre, UArts Dance Theatre at the Drake, Jan. 28