TV Reviews : ‘Dance’ an Exercise in Music Visualization

The newest episode of PBS’ “Dance in America” series isn’t primarily dance-oriented at all. Titled “Lar Lubovitch Dance Company and Momix: Pictures on the Edge,” the program belongs to the Canadian experiments in music visualization that have previously yielded unconventional TV versions of “The Firebird,” “Classical Symphony” and “Romeo and Juliet” featuring Charles Dutoit and the Montreal Symphony.

The two-part, hourlong telecast can be seen tonight at 8 on KVCR-TV Channel 24, at 10 on KCET-TV Channel 28 and at 10:30 on KPBS-TV Channel 15.

As in the “Prokofiev by Two” telecast shown on Bravo cable this season, Dutoit conducts a pair of orchestral chestnuts and plays a character role in the second: in this case, Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition.” New age ringmaster Moses Pendleton borrows images and effects from his stage works, provides a tour of his Connecticut home, throws in mirror tricks and obviously hopes that close-ups of himself and lots of billowing fabric will unify the sprawling, whimsical result.

No chance, though the long-limbed lady at the window, the wide-eyed oxen on the road and the discreetly photographed nudity in the pool certainly prove diverting along the way. Bernar Hebert directed.

Lubovitch’s “Fandango” supplies the only sustained dancing on the program: a sinewy, gymnastic duet set to Ravel’s “Bolero” that tries to avoid the cliches this music invites. Indeed, as much as the sexual tension portrayed in the relationship between the willowy Mia Babalis and the coltish Sylvain Lafortune, you feel Lubovitch straining to resist balletic glamour, easy symmetries, predictable unisons.

Instead, the choreography stays at a deliberately tough, prosaic, push-pull level of physicality, with lots of floor slithering and angular lifts building to a series of body-swings that are the closest Lubovitch gets to a sense of release.

Barbara Willis Sweete (director of the “Romeo and Juliet” section of “Prokofiev by Two”) captures the dancing in long, fluid takes bathed in washes of orange and blue light.

Each half of the program begins with brief composer biographies--more evidence that showcasing dance is less the focus here than inventing an irreverent form of classical MTV.