Yaledancers milk the shake and mix the style

In Yaledancers' Spring Concert 2000 this weekend, one of the pieces is danced to the Nina Simone song, "Do I move you?" It's a fitting question that this troupe seems to be asking of its audience—and the answer is a resounding, "Yes!"

Good dance isn't just a vehicle for emotional transcendence; it makes you question the physicality of the world around you. Several times throughout the performance I wondered how the body was capable of such steps—the ability of these dancers to move past apparent physical limitations is what makes them Yale's most serious and accomplished dance group.

KATHERINE ALDRICH/YH First the Yaledance...then the Running Man.

Typically, Yaledancers' spring performance is dedicated to more experimental work, and this season offered three premieres. The evening begins on a crisp note with "You Got All the Milk, I Got All the Shake!" choreographed by Alexis Carra, MC '03, and Alyssa Rapp, DC '00. The steps are sensuously in sync with the music, as dancers throw their legs and bodies into the air to the cue of Duke Ellington's bleeding trumpet. In the second movement of the piece, the corps of dancers seems like one dark, watery mass that is too delicate to remain on stage for long, breaking apart in ripples. Provocative, languid steps are fused with quick, tight footwork; the dancers appear to transcend real time, moving in impossible slow motion or fast forward.

"Ivory Suite," choreographed by Dustin Brown, JE '00, evokes the great master Balanchine in its Igor Stravinsky score and quirky elegance. In pieces like "You Got all the Milk," the dancers move like teeth in a zipper that never fully closes, before slipping elusively offstage.

One of the evening's most ambitious pieces, as well as its most visually arresting, is "Ritus I," choreographed by Justin Garrick, SY '00, and Liz Vacco, SM '00. The double mirror backdrop is reminiscent of Jerome Robbins' "Afternoon of the Faun," and, as in that piece, it becomes a visual metaphor suggesting distortions in both identity and reality. The stage is plunged into darkness, except for a spotlight around which audience members are led onstage to sit. Most of the dancing takes place within the perimeters of this center circle, and in two other spotlights that later appear. The relationship between the three planes of images—one real and two reflected—and the three arenas of light is elucidated in the strikingly original choreography.

The piece begins in silence (though later a Gregorian chant exaggerates the drama), with Garrick's body slowly crescendoing into a scream. Here, it seems, is the essence of dance, when the body becomes language and movement its voice. In particular, Kevin Morrison, Sidra Bell, SY '01,Garrison, and Pamela James, JE '01, do an amazing job of sustaining the piece's conceptual and choreographic complexities. One of the evening's most beautiful moves occurs when James lifts the arms of a seated Garrick with her foot, as if willing him, through her, to dance. Bell and Garrick have a dance of beautiful strug-gle, while Garrick and Morrison's interplay seems a fight to the death. This piece raised many questions, refusing to offer any obvious interpretation. Fittingly, as a murdered Garrick is dragged off the stage, the audience members are left sitting in the dark, unsure of what to do. This Was Never Romance" includes a dancer being dragged across the stage, "Your Neighbor's Noise" is a fun, provocative piece with a standout performance by Carra, and "Celebrate" features the dancing hands of drummer Tyron Baker.

The evening's highlight, though, is undeniably its finale, the world premiere of "Savitri & Satyavan," choreographed by James and Bell and with an original score by Bell's father, Dennis. Members of the talented Jazz Dialect (Matthew Clayton, MC '02, on soprano saxophone and conducting, Konrad Kaczmarek, MC '02, on piano, Ben Landsverk, TC '01, on bass, and Nick Forte as the guest drummer), a string quartet, African percussionist, and four vocalists all bring Bell's lush, haunting jazz score to life. The highly successful collaboration of live music and dance is just the sort of project that one wishes to find more often at Yale.

Dance

Yaledancers Spring Concert Fri., Mar. 24 and Sat., Mar. 25, 8 p.m. Educational Center for the Arts 55 Audubon St.

The choreography and dancers respond to the soundscape in five movements that are truly a triumph. Garrick and Vacco's pas de deux is exceptional, the tension in their sustained extensions and intertwined steps mirrored in the crying soprano sax. Also incredibly strong is the fourth movement, with dancers Ibijoke Akinola, MC '03, Brown, and Kirsten Leonard, TD '00. The sculptural interaction between this trio and the attention to musical details in their dancing are breathtaking. The dancer who steals the show, though, is Nambi Gardner, SM '01, bursting onto the stage in the final movement, "Rebirth." Her joyful energy carries her body across the stage with smooth electricity. Like a sparkler, she spins her explosive light in all directions until the final moments when the stage goes dark. Leaving Yaledancers Spring Concert, one carries away the feeling of being deeply moved despite two hours of sitting still.

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