TV Reviews : Some Familiar Steps Through ‘Windows’

Although Daniel Ezralow’s “Windows” begins with a quote from Alfred Hitchcock and other evidence that you’re watching a whimsical choreographic spinoff of “Rear Window,” this 47-minute 1992 dance suite on Bravo cable represents little more than a big-budget European remake of a 1989 KCET project titled “Episodes.”

As they did six years ago, Ezralow and his ISO Dance Theatre collaborators Jamey Hampton, Morleigh Steinberg and Ashley Roland adapt their familiar stage repertory to new environments. For instance, the antic duet “Woomen” turns up again--but in a bathroom this time--and the ISO Gang of Four also recycles “I Do” and “Psycho Killer” for major segments. Even the premise of peering into various apartments for snapshot-style glimpses of their inhabitants (“Blind Venetians”) comes from “Episodes.”

Where “Episodes” provided six apartments, however, “Windows” has 14, allowing Ezralow lots more opportunities for peek-a-boo eroticism, with the usual emphasis on beefcake display. The dancing, of course, is always fresh, potent and polished.

Veteran Danish television-dance director Thomas Grimm shoots the performances rather flatly, but many of the sequences remind you of the invigorating influence of ISO and Ezralow on American postmodernism back when most of these choreographies were new.

The buoyant pop duets accompanied by Hi-Lo’s records (“DNA”) make the strongest impression, while the weakest pieces may be the sophomoric “Temptation” (a deranged vicar literally burning with lust for an underdressed nun) or “Leise Still” (a hunky tailor’s dummy coming to life for some pointless neo-Expressionist grotesquerie).

Ezralow will be on the UCLA dance series in May; let’s hope he’ll avoid merely reanimating 10-year-old pieces (as he’s doing here much of the time) and offer some genuine mid-’90s creativity.