BodyVox

by Janet Anderson

So much happened during BodyVox's Reverie, a one-night Annenberg performance last week, that all any observer could do was lean back and enjoy. And laugh a lot. The eight-member troupe performed 11 different dance/theater/movie pieces in under two hours. This is multimedia dance theater all right -- in fact it's almost in a category of its own. The effect overall is speeded-up, pay-attention-or-you'll-miss-something, roller-coaster theater.

Reverie, as the name suggests, went back into time with dances performed here before, including my very favorite "Deere John," a filmed pas de deux between co-artistic director Jamey Hampton and a huge Dirt Mover. It's a little hard to explain why a man dancing to Saint-Saens' "The Swan" while circling a large piece of machinery is not only funny, it's also sort of a pensive little meditation on unattainable love -- really. Hampton's a terrific mover as he demonstrated again in "Moto Perpetuo" where a vibrating hand suddenly changes to a vibrating foot -- then head. You name it. Is suffering a bee sting reflecting Paganini's buzzing violin music? Maybe. It was certainly virtuoso movement.

Co-artistic director Ashley Roland contributed a knockout solo called "Beat" in which, like a boxer in the ring, she punched the air and kicked the space around her to pounding Evan Solot music. The guy behind me let out a long, sighing "Ohmygawd." The other BodyVoxers were all equally intriguing to watch. In "X-Axis," two guys, Eric Skinner and Daniel Kirk in red leotards, made human abstractions as either one or both hung from a trapeze, creating eerie human sculpture in air.

BodyVox's film "Case Studies from the Groat Center for Sleep Disorders," is a send-up of sleep disorder clinics. The BodyVoxers present a little drama with Dr. Groat (actually Mitchell Rose, the film's maker) diagnosing ridiculous sleep disorders while various dancers are filmed (stop action) curling, sprawling, clinging or kicking in a bed.

For sheer dance beauty nothing came close to the dance BodyVox calls "Reverie," in which four men are dressed as bamboo stalks (yes) and two women as calla lilies (mm hmm). The costumes by Michael Curry, of Lion King fame, are gorgeous in shades of lime green, gold and orange. Who knows what these people are doing as the stalks carry the flowers around the stage. Absurd as it sounds, the dance was utterly beguiling. How about at least two nights next visit?