DANCE REVIEW : From the Funny to the Serious

Two decades ago, Woody Allen filmed himself as a talking sperm, jostled and packed into a chamber with other giant-headed hopefuls waiting for the big moment. The funny vignette, from “Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex,” was memorable for capturing some of that time’s sexual anxiety--such as Allen and his pals worrying about all that wasted swimming should the egg be on The Pill, for example.

Jean Isaacs’ dance “Blondie” resurrects a similar ridiculous humor. The flesh-colored, body-hugging costumes on her dancers become condoms (condumes? costoms?) in a safe-sex message for teen-agers trying on sex for the first time.

Isaacs, artistic director of Isaacs, McCaleb & Dancers, premiered the work Thursday night for the first of 8 performances running through March 29 at the company’s studio space on 5th Avenue.

Though “Blondie” has its amusing moments--intentionally awkward partnerings, dancers crawling to the drawl of a Roach Sisters tune, teen-age cocky esprit undermined by youthful uncertainty--the piece veers into throwaway silliness when three dancers wag shaming fingers as they lip sync the Supremes oldie “Stop! In the Name of Love.”

The dance also suffers from a dragging prelude that includes both family-portrait tableaux caught by flashes of a photographer’s strobe and a hokey, pokey sequence of dancers being unhooked from the yoke of societal and parental control. In the body of the work, however, the beat of pop star Blondie’s song “Heart of Glass” gave the work its best thrust.

On similar themes of couples and coupling, a far stronger premiere of Isaacs’ followed, but “Little Passions” had a serious tone. The work opened and closed with Terry Wilson performing a pensive solo in a weave of blue light. Two couples asleep on the floor rose and danced gentle and sensuous slow-motion sequences, which “reality” intermittently jarred with violent onslaughts.

The beautiful ruminations of “Little Passions” revealed nothing inventive in the way of movement, but neither was the work pretentious or gloomily self-conscious. Its most striking aspect was the compatibility of Isaacs’ choreography with composer Christopher Penney’s electronic score. The two were fluid and consistent in an overall somber mood. Movement swayed as the music pulsed, both sharing a steady, confident, artistic breath.

Wilson’s well-defined expressivity held the work together, and the partnership of Ricardo Peralta and Gail Olson was secure in lifts and in their stark configurations against the back wall. Debra Mark’s lighting design was notable for shadow effects and a sensitivity congruent with the movement and music.

“Little Passions” was not plagued with droopiness despite its slow-motion segments, unlike “Human Remains,” a recent work by Isaacs that opened the program. “Human Remains” had its premiere at Mandell Weiss Theatre in January, along with “Vivat St. Petersburg!,” the only work by Nancy McCaleb performed Thursday.

An injury to company dancer Stacy Scardino, slated to perform a key solo in McCaleb’s premiere, “Love Is a Fish,” resulted in the work being dropped from the program. The company expects to reinstate the dance tonight and in remaining performances.

“Vivat St. Petersburg!” was created in response to the civic celebrations in November, 1991, when the Soviet-era name Leningrad was changed back to St. Petersburg. McCaleb has adroitly impressed a sense of a national character into this seven-part work--a character overladen with cynicism, self-deprecating in its dark humor and buoyed by jubilation.

The slick technical advantages of the work’s Mandell Weiss presentation in January were diminished in the studio space, which lacks such proscenium features as wings and a curtain, for example. But the theatrical power inherent in the work was not lost in this new, relatively rough staging.

For example, in the Promethean section, “73 Years of History,” five dancers roll black oil barrels across the dimly lit floor and, like automatons, lift and drop large bricks into the empty barrels to booming effect. This intenseness of unrelenting futility would probably work in a parking lot.

Guest dancer Greg Lane contributed a well-articulated richness, particularly when he danced, remarkably, with a black hood over his head in the section “Vladimir, Joseph Karl.” Peter McMath’s presence, sometimes monolithic, sometimes sinister, was a theatrical asset.