ARTS . Dance

Elements of Style

DANCE REVIEW: Larry Keigwin's Elements


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Published: Jan 26, 2011

Even if you didn't read Larry Keigwin's bio in the program notes for his company's show at the Annenberg Center, you still could've figured out some of his creative influences. Keigwin's credits include staging an event for Fashion Week; creating choreography for the Radio City Rockettes and an off-Broadway musical; and running a cabaret featuring modern dance, vaudeville and burlesque. Vestiges of each experience showed up in Elements, a sly, playful program in which Keigwin becomes choreographic collagist and dance DJ.

It's accessible and enjoyable enough to elicit laughs — like when a male dancer wearing towels on his head comically vamps it up while voguing with a water bottle, or when a few other dancers flash their bare behinds as they scurry off stage.

The towels are part of a running shower-and-spa motif in Water, one of the four segments of Elements. The other three — Fire, Earth and Air — also have strong visual and theatrical themes. Fancifully costumed performers in Fire are evocative of acrobatic circus flamethrowers; in Earth, dancers turn into feral lizards; and then everyone takes off as flight attendants for Air, the show's finale.

Keigwin's choreography is an agile mash-up of ballet, modern and hip-hop. Meantime, the soundtrack plays Mozart, Cole Porter, Willie Nelson and Philip Glass.

Inspired by the four elements, the show is squarely earthbound in sensibility. Abstraction is at a minimum and intellectual pretension is nowhere in sight. Keigwin and his crew steer clear of loading up the show with gestures that are deeply steeped in the academic language of dance.

This approach could irk dance purists and others who feel that entertainment and serious art are at opposite ends of the spectrum. But the two can meet in the middle, and this production is a prime example.

Jan. 21, Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts.