Jeanne Ruddy Dance

Thu., April 10, 7:30 p.m., Fri.-Sat., April 11-12, 8 p.m., Sun., April 13, 2 p.m., through April 19, $25-$100, Performance Garage, 1515 Brandywine St., 215-569-4060, ruddydance.org.

by Deni Kasrel

dance

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Dance is a body language, but within that language there are many dialects. Translating those dialects can be a challenge to even veterans of the art form, like choreographer Susanne Linke, who set a piece for the Jeanne Ruddy Dance company. Ruddy notes that in Linke's work, "There are rhythms going on in the upper body against what's going on in the lower body. And they are contrary to what any of us have done. ... So it's a challenge to your thinking process. How you would normally do a step or movement, she turns it inside out, and she changes the way you might even approach a beat."

Linke, 63, studied under Mary Wigman and Dore Hoyer, two leaders of the post-WWII German Expressionist movement, and she danced for experimentalist Pina Bausch prior to creating her own body of work. For JRD, Linke created world première Quasi Normal. The piece integrates movement based on classic German Expressionist poses as well as the choreographer's own vision, which Ruddy describes as dark, intense and "unvarnished — it's like stripping down to the essence of the dancer."

The other work on the program, Breathless, is a revised edition of a Ruddy piece presented in 2005. Inspired by Theodore Dreiser's novel An American Tragedy as well as a trio of true-life crimes where a man kills his female lover, it's unpleasant subject matter, for sure, and a topic Ruddy feels strongly about: "It's the ultimate abuse of a woman, and it's happening all around us. ... These are desperate actions. This is something that is fascinating to all of us ... it needed to be put in an art piece." While this new iteration of Breathless is more foreboding and abstract than the original, Ruddy says there's no missing the point. "There are elements of a storyline, though it's somewhat surrealistic. They don't all line up. But if you wanted to, you could follow it like an opera."

Thu., April 10, 7:30 p.m., Fri.-Sat., April 11-12, 8 p.m., Sun., April 13, 2 p.m., through April 19, $25-$100, Performance Garage, 1515 Brandywine St., 215-569-4060, ruddydance.org.