DANCE REVIEW : Joe Goode Work Evokes the Search for a Sense of Place

At the end of “Take/Place,” the collaborative work presented by the Joe Goode Performance Group at Orange Coast College in Costa Mesa on Saturday night, the narrator and central character (Goode himself) has journeyed from short pants to a suit and cigar while fancifully looking for a space and identity to call his own.

“The truth about place,” he concludes, “is that it isn’t romantic.”

Actually, that’s the opposite of what this halcyon hour-and-10-minute piece had been telling us. The clues were in its series of theatrically rich images, a dreamlike unfolding of scene after scene, breathtakingly wistful at moments, in heavenly streaks of light (by Jack Carpenter), and drifting smoke that rose with occasional choir-like harmonies sung by dancers.

Unfortunately, it arrives too close to where it started without a sense of discovery. The gentle movement quality has not changed, although the words tell us changes have occurred.

Beth Custer’s taped score of tapping pulses, melancholy horns and wafting chimes dappled the silence from time to time.

The movement was never less than romantic: gently paced swirling, freezes mid-gesture and brief duet work with gentle lifts and landings. Spoken text about memories or desires was handled just as beautifully as steps by Marit Brook-Kothlow, Liz Burritt, Suellen Einarsen, Miguel Gutierrez and Wayne Hazzard. Especially evocative of a childhood place-finding ritual was a scene in which Einarsen locates herself in terms of the stage, state, country, etc.

But that kind of keenly self-conscious interval was rare. The piece goes on too long in rambling travelogue mode--though much of it is satisfyingly wistful and clever.