Music and Dance Reviews : Premiere of Ackerman’s ‘Burden’ at Occidental

With its severe formal construction and eventual triumph over despair, Ferne Ackerman’s “Burden of Proof” proved a major achievement at its local premiere Sunday at Occidental College.

Danced by Ackerman’s Big Flood Dance Company, the hourlong work (to music by Beethoven, Shostakovich and Barber) is divided into three “Chapters,” with major movement and gestural motifs from the hyperkinetic, compacted first part recurring later.

At first, the repetitive sequences--punctuated by isolated falling turns and gestures of ineffectual protest--appeared designed only to mirror the formal patterns in Beethoven’s “Grosse Fuge.” But emotional values inevitably arose. A later sequence, for instance, offered rapid-fire run-throughs of personal relationships: men and women gently touched, embraced, violently pushed apart, shuddered and collapsed in shame or need.

Generally, group processes dominated, though there was one duet, strongly danced by Celeste Anacker and Richard Korngute. (A scheduled solo by Ackerman was cut because she did not feel it was ready, according to a spokesperson for the theater.) The group offered cohesion, but also containment: Members would raise the fallen, but only so that they could resume their place in the ranks.

The turning point occurred in a kind of ritual purification (set to the luminous “Hymn of Thanksgiving” from Beethoven’s Quartet No. 15 in A minor), after which the dancers’ support of one another proved fluidly interchangeable and deeply sympathetic. But Ackerman refused to allow a simple, sentimental ending: one despondent woman was left behind by the others.