Also this issue:

"4 Artists of Distinction"
The African American Museum's "4 Artists of Distinction" is bright and deep.
-Robin Rice

Wlodzimierz Ksiazek: New Paintings
-Susan Hagen

Le Ballet National du Senegal
-Deni Kasrel

Beatlemania Now Project
-Paul Burress

Dealer's Choice
-Shivani Mahendroo

In the Shape of a Spider
-Shivani Mahendroo

Georgian State Dance Company
-Janet Anderson

Lucia di Lammermoor
-David Shengold

November 14-20, 2002

artpicks

Donna Uchizono Co.

The mind-body experience is a familiar motif in contemporary dance, but Donna Uchizono, a choreographer who clearly moves to the beat of her own drummer, prefers to delve into the mind-disembodied experience. In her playfully named State of Heads, bobble-headed performers represent notions of detachment and disorientation. The stage is stark, everyone wears white and though there is action, even the choreographer admits, "Nothing really ever happens." Yet, like Samuel Beckett and Jerry Seinfeld, Uchizono has a way of making something out of nothing. The piece evokes a weird, whimsical world that compels attention by the very fact that it is so odd.

Low, the other work on her program at the Painted Bride, turns the tango upside down. Normally, when tangoing, the weight of the movement is borne by a dancer's torso, but here the weight drops to their calves and feet. Part of the piece is performed with the dancers lying on the floor. Inspired by the Tobas Indians of Argentina, Uchizono says the piece draws on these natives' "inherent sense of low center of gravity, constrictions of limited space, the unacknowledged influence of African dance and the dynamics of exchange between partners." While paying homage to tradition, Low is dramatic and sensual, and this is a one-of-a-kind nuevo tango where familiar steps are deconstructed by patterns and phrases that coalesce into something else altogether.

Thu.-Sat., Nov. 14-16, 8 p.m., $15-$20, Painted Bride Art Center, 230 Vine St., 215-925-9914.

—Deni Kasrel