Voice of Dance

Jenkins The Sensualist
Margaret Jenkins Dance Company: Other Suns
Project Artaud Theater, San Francisco, CA
December 7, 2007

By
ALLAN ULRICH
allanu815@aol.com
VoiceofDance.com 2007

Margaret Jenkins Dance Company in Other Suns. Photo courtesy of Margaret Jenkins Dance Company.

What initially impresses about Margaret Jenkinscompelling new work is the current of sensuality that simmers on the surface. At the beginning of Other Suns, given its world premiere Thursday (Nov. 6) at San Francisco's Project Artaud Theater, Melanie Elms, standing on a central platform, rubs up against Joseph Copley like a kitten seeking affection. She pushes her shoulder against him to keep him from toppling and repeats the gesture as the other five barefoot performers line up at his side. The tension is palpable. Forty minutes later, at the end of the work, Elms and the same five dancers attempt (unsuccessfully) to restrain Copley from breaking away from the group, yet he repeatedly frees himself and, with a leap, seems either to swat insects or reach into the ether for an undefined object.

Throughout the work, dancers respond and react to each other as if they were complexes of flesh and sinew that must be understood before they can be engaged. Other Suns abounds with lifts, but rarely has Jenkins shown you the mechanics of raising another body aloft in such detail. That's not to say that the work is about process. In fact, the focus, edgy tone and irresistibly dramatic trajectory provide a compact introduction to the choreographer, if there be anyone who has not encountered Jenkins during the 34 years she has maintained a company in this city. It sounds more than slightly facile to say this, but if JenkinsA Slipping Glimpse, her 2006 project, suggested a major symphony, then, Other Suns, which repeats through the weekend, brings to mind a carefully incised sonata.

In the press material, Jenkins reveals that this work has been inspired by her working with modern dancers in China. She tells us also that this is the first installment of a proposed trilogy (a collaboration with China's Guangdong Modern Dance Company, set for 2009) and that this current piece concerns symmetry and asymmetry and how they resonate in the universe. While none of us should trust what choreographer say about their dances, in Jenkinscase, the information may explain the proliferation of unisons (walks, upper body manipulations, floor work) that run through Other Suns. Look for a recurring image and you come up with the convulsion that periodically travels through the dancersbodies like an electrical current.

Curious here, too, is Jenkinsdeployment of music; it seems to form an interdependent relationship with the movement, belying the choreographer's Cunningham background. The recorded scores'both commissioned for earlier dance projects by other choreographers'include Bun-Ching Lam's 1995 ...Like Water and Paul Dresher's 1981-82 Channels Passing. The Asian-flavored texture of the former's strings, piano and percussion are cannily contrasted with the latter's jazzier flavor. Alexander V. Nicholsdesign of dozens of suspended lamps and a ziggurat-like sculpture is simple, effective and allusive. Laura Hazlett's costumes, in shiny grays, blues and lavenders, complement the bodies of the dancers.

Perhaps, Jenkins is here pursuing the effect of natural law on movement. Halfway through Other Suns, water begins to drip onto the platform, which, when removed, discloses a small pool. The moment evokes a serene mood that travels through the dancerslimbs. The phrasing is extraordinarily refined; descents seem almost calibrated. There's a feeling here, too, that the community is our only bulwark against chaos. Daisy chains erupt and are fractured; dancers crouch in sprint position, but they don't race anywhere, Fluttering arms don't develop. I could live without the hands covering mouths and the panicky stares, the "silent scream" image that has become a clichof modernism.

What can't be denied is high technical command of the current members of the Jenkins company. To Copley (a thrilling presence) and Elms, add the names of Kelly Del Rosario, Steffany Ferroni, Matthew Holland, Deborah Miller and Ryan T. Smith. Of course, one remains curious about the remaining parts of the trilogy, though Other Suns stands alone quite nicely. Earlier this year, Jenkins made Thread, her first work for the San Francisco Ballet. One can't help wondering how that experience and the contemporaneous creation of Other Suns fed off each other. The answer may be forthcoming during the SF Ballet's New Works Festival. No one interested in dance should miss either piece.

Other Suns will be repeated Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 7 p.m. at Project Artaud Theater, 450 Florida St., San Francisco. Call (415) 392-4400 or visit www.cityboxoffice.com.