Maximum Exposure in Familiar Territory
Jess Curtis/Gravity Intercontinental Collaborations 3, The Symmetry Project CounterPULSE, San Francisco, CA
March 28, 2008
Jess Curtis and Maria Scaroni in The Symmetry Project. Photo by Sven Hagolani.
Jess Curtis is traveling light this year. The dancer-choreographer, who divides his time between San Francisco and Berlin, has returned for his annual performance engagement at San Francisco’s CounterPULSE with a pithy double-bill that requires only four dancers to bring off. Jess Curtis/Gravity opened Thursday (March 27) with Curtis in a leading role for a change. The Symmetry Project, developed here and in Germany, is a one-half astonishing show.
That half comes after intermission, with Curtis and the Italian dancer Maria Francesca Scaroni collaborating in Symmetry Study # 7, the U.S. premiere of a piece completed in Germany. Curtis’ earlier residencies at CounterPULSE have resembled brainy, postmodern cabarets, very loosely drawn around a theme. Last year’s Under the Radar was particularly successful in its mix of disparate episodes of physical comedy, rope climbing, singing and juggling; Scaroni, among her other assignments, served as a bartender.
This year, she and Curtis need no situations, props, or clothing, for that matter. For 40 minutes, the totally undraped pair provide a gripping epic of shape-shifting, abetted only by a spare, recorded, structured improvisational score by double-bassist Klaus Janek and video artist Regina Teichs. The pair begins by posing on opposite sides of the stage. When Curtis doffs his robe like a lizard shedding his skin, you sense you’re in for something special.
He and Scaroni flow from one sculptural entanglement to another. At one moment, with limbs clasped, they’re rolling across the space like a wagon wheel. At another, she’s hoisting him on to her back. They split apart and slowly recombine. Her legs encircle his neck, and then, they’re hopping around like frogs chasing a fly. The piece, in three sections, does not lack for variety. In the middle part, the tempo slightly quickens, while the twosome seems to interact with the kaleidoscopically processed images of themselves on video.
Clothing would be a distraction. The nudity is not particularly shocking; the work may be deemed erotic by some observers, but the dancers certainly do little to encourage that response. They’re inclined, instead, to image making: surely, the curved arms and torso alignments that seemed to replicate those statues of the god Shiva are not coincidental. At one moment, with Curtis standing behind Scaroni, she seems to possess both his genitals and her own.
Yes, Symmetry Study #7 does recall the vintage, Alison Chase era of Pilobolus. And, yes, the work owes much to contact improvisation. But, unlike that discipline, in which an element of risk is omnipresent, this work is tension-free, serene, almost pre-ordained. You really do end up feeling that the man and woman are different aspects of a single organism. In his recent seasons here, Curtis has often been content to play the emcee, the leader of the revels. One had forgotten how resilient, technically fearless and physically eloquent he can still be. And, for somebody who has been on the dance scene for at least a couple of decades, Curtis is still in enviably wonderful shape. Scaroni is everywhere his equal.
I can understand the problem of fitting Symmetry Study #7 into a full evening. And I can understand the irony of preceding this magnificent display of controlled physicality with a duet for a disabled and conventionally abled dancer. Yet, the solution is not satisfying. The world premiere of Asymmetrical Tendencies was directed and choreographed by Curtis and features Rhona Coughlan and Tara Brandel, members of Croi Glan Integrated Dance Company, based in Cork, Ireland. (Croi Glan is Gaelic for "clear heart.")
This is another of those talky movement essays during which the performers (Brandel and Coughlan in a wheelchair) soliloquize about fantasies and reality, while navigating through the space. The dancers’ lilting brogue is attractive, but the bitter ironies of thwarted aspirations are hammered home with a kind of heroic sentimentality, and you can almost predict the moves, as Coughlan’s upper body strength allows her to lift and manipulate her partner. Hovering throughout the 25-minute piece is an aura of self-pity, which, I suspect, is not the impression Curtis was attempting to convey here.
Asymmetrical Tendencies is all the more disappointing when one recalls how imaginatively Curtis has deployed and integrated disabled dancers in his earlier productions. And any program with AXIS Dance Company will provide a more satisfying demonstration of how to transform a disability into an asset. Brandel and Coughlan may possess clear hearts, but watching them bleed is not particularly edifying.
Jess Curtis/Gravity performs through Sunday and April 3-6 at 8 p.m. CounterPULSE, 1310 Mission St., San Francisco. www.counterpulse.org (415) 626-2060.
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