‘Wall’ of Words and a ‘Blessed’ Event

Walking onto the stage of the Carpenter Performing Arts Center in Long Beach, choreographer Bebe Miller stands facing the audience, then rotates into several different profile positions and finally turns back, hands on hips. “So,” she says, “now you know me, right?”

As her eight dancers enter in groups, chattering sociably, a taped Miller voice-over track asks more questions about audience assumptions. “So who of you looked for the gay men in the group? And how many counted the number of white people?”

Getting beyond stereotypes and snap judgments to more authentic statements of identity is the obvious mission of Miller’s new “Going to the Wall,” an hourlong collaboration with composer Don Byron and dramaturge Talvin Wilks, presented as a finished “preview” on Friday two months before its official premiere at Dartmouth. Unfortunately, Miller finds no compelling movement strategies to express her theme--it remains mired in the spoken word and, indeed, ends up making much of the dancing look mannered, blunted or inconsequential.

In contrast to the unpretentious, masterly 1996 ensemble suite “Blessed” on the same program, “Going to the Wall” strains toward some sort of grandiose, bigger-than-dance event status, pasting highfalutin museum labels on perfectly self-evident passages, as when Miller announces that the duets we’re watching represent “dialogues in the flesh” or that her rehearsal studio serves as a refuge from the unresolved tensions of contemporary life. “So much to be afraid of,” she intones, “so good to put the burden down.”

Perhaps, but why put that burden on the audience? Focusing less on dancers dancing than dancers declaring their individuality by electing to join or leave passages of group choreography, “Going to the Wall” wastes time in endless choreographic throat-clearing, with dancers shown aimlessly milling around and interacting as if in a rehearsal break. Elsewhere they contribute confessional sound bites about self-definition and acceptance as if playing some “Truth or Dare” party game. All this documentary data might well be intriguing as an adjunct to a Bebe Miller dance performance, but here it’s presented as a substitute for one: anecdote instead of art.

Tim Miller (no relation) recently adopted the same theme and text-driven methodology in his “I Am Not You” at Cal State L.A. and Highways. But he avoided any taint of glazed or self-infatuated rhetoric by letting his dancers speak for themselves, “Chorus Line” style, directly to their audience rather than in disembodied interview tapes or through a resident den mother. And Tim Miller’s use of talk helped heighten the energy of the piece, where Bebe Miller’s continually undercuts it.

Spiced with forceful rap, Byron’s score keeps offering “Going to the Wall” an urgent invitation to shut up and dance, and occasionally Miller yields, allowing her company members to define their individuality in motion through performances that are at once technically glorious and full of life. Typically, her duets find each partner sharing the responsibilities of lifting and supporting the other, but she also dramatizes gender distinctions at one point by having the men adopt a vertical thrust while the women stay wide, low to the ground and horizontal. However, every time the group dancing begins to engulf the performers and audience, Miller pulls back, as if somehow afraid to be the choreographer and company leader she is instead of a preacher of postmodern self-esteem.

Happily, “Blessed” suffers no identity crisis, with Miller complementing recordings by the Cafe of the Gate of Salvation (an Australian a cappella gospel choir) with dancing of spectacular freedom and a magnificent softness. “Blessed is the air we breathe,” sings the choir, and under golden lighting designed by Michael Mazzola, eight dancers in browns and beiges seem to absorb that light and float in that air. Chains of mercurial duets and other small-scale passages celebrate their individuality with no need for spoken commentary while delicate expressive details--two men unexpectedly kissing, for example--keep the context deeply personal.

“In the spirit, there is freedom,” sings the choir at the end, as the dancers explore states of imbalance and gather together for a finale with great cumulative impact but no applause-courting, no forced unanimity, no compromise. “Going to the Wall” expounds at length on how individual artists can perform collectively--but it adds up to no more than theory on the subject. “Blessed,” however, offers the absolute proof.