DANCE REVIEW : Experiments in ‘Twisted Spring’

The fading industrial district surrounding LACE, which this weekend hosted the first of two “Twisted Spring” programs designed to showcase new works by local choreographers, contains extraordinary streetscapes. Separated from the downtown arts facility by a railroad track is a long curving wall. At a corner, it meets a shorter wall pocked with hooks, in front of which choreographer John Pickett built a wooden platform on which to dance, open to the chill evening and the city’s noise.

The audience sat on chairs placed directly on the tracks, or stood to watch the 40-minute piece, adapted from Chinua Achebe’s novel, “No Longer at Ease.” Pickett and Julia Pfeifer, wearing only briefs and whitewash, lived on the platform as the sound track, a collage of natural sounds and plaintive flute and percussion, sketched in a world calm and threatening by turns. Their minimalist movement derived from Butoh, the two performers appeared to be on an odyssey, alone in a wilderness, comforting and protecting one another.

The program continued in the LACE performance space with Anita Pace’s brief jazz suite, “Thrum.” Three women (Pace, Grace Balloffet and Janet Carroll) danced stiffly in disconcertingly varied styles, while a fourth performer, Kevin Stutz, seemed barely able to keep up with them. Dressed in wisps of nylon cut from pairs of panty hose, the dancers mostly focused on the floor.

Shel Wagner closed the evening with two strong studies of a young woman interacting with members of the older generation. In “Step on a Crack” Wagner followed a path of spilled rice laid by Carol Flanagan, dancing barefoot and tracing hopscotch patterns on the scattered grains.