DANCE REVIEW : Gender Role Reversals Dominate ‘Firewaves’

Attempts to evoke the past inevitably reveal current obsessions more clearly than those of any earlier time.

To art historians, Jugendstil is a movement that began around 1890 as a German manifestation of what we call Art Nouveau. However, the three locally based creators of “Firewaves, an evening of dance and performance in the spirit of Jugendstil,” all focused on reversals of conventional gender roles.

They used Jugendstil if it served them but borrowed as much from Constructivism, post-Duncan (and post-Diaghilev) dance, the operas of Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht and/or German cinema of the 1930s.

At the Odyssey Theatre on Tuesday, Gilberte Meunier’s feverish duet “Lilies Gone Mad” and Betty Nash’s bitter trio “Reflections” each showed a dominant woman-in-pants becoming enervated from interaction with submissive, “feminized” partners.

Drag and enervation also served as subtexts for Martin Kersels’ comic solo “Breath,” in which this 6-foot-6, 300-pound performer wore a tutu of wooden boards and held his breath while executing movement tasks--including parodies of ballerina daintiness.

Closer to Jugendstil than her colleagues, Meunier used Mahler music of the period and costumes by Manena Fayos suggesting the rhythmic cascades of drapery in paintings by Klimt and Hodler. Her partner, Derek Penfield, projected exactly the androgynous glamour that Beardsley celebrated.

But, overtaxed by the technical demands of their roles, Meunier and Penfield danced together awkwardly (especially in the gymnastic floor sequences), never making her sense of weight and his lightness fully articulate. Florid emoting scarcely helped.

In contrast, “Reflections” boasted Nash’s exciting skill and authority as a performer, but suffered from a meandering scenario and uneven levels of choreography.

At one point, for instance, a Nash solo seemed to fragment hoary showdance cliches and then inventively reassemble them. However, a crucial tango sequence looked barely sketched in: no insight, no commentary, not even a decent period pastiche. And, for once, Nash found no way to make her celebrated vocal talents more than a pointless indulgence.

Will Salmon supplied atmospheric piano accompaniment (based on music by Hugo Wolf) and joined Nash in that anticlimactic tango. Luis Alfaro appeared periodically, stripping (like Nash) from ecclesiastical robes to a suit to black stockings and garter belt as the piece evolved from formula repression to formula decadence.

Resolutely contemporary in style, Kersels’ performance-art solo aimed at being double-edged but wasn’t long enough to make his gasping-for-breath and increasing exhaustion counterbalance the outrageous comedy. But, in an evening of mannered, hothouse expression, his directness proved refreshing--and, moreover, some of his grotesque undulations inadvertently lampooned motifs presented solemnly elsewhere on the program.

Co-produced by the Odyssey and Pipeline, “Firewaves” continues on Tuesdays at 8 p.m. and Sundays at 7 p.m. (Jan. 29 and Feb. 12 at 4 p.m.).