Second Hand Ensemble’s Gravity-Defying Lunacy

Whether doing the tango like toads, doing plies with Velcro headgear, performing a woozy balancing act as canines, or posing a la Martha Graham, the Second Hand performance ensemble proved to be movement specialists of the first order at Pepperdine University’s Smothers Theatre on Saturday. Fusing wit, mime, acrobatics and sublime control, they also created an evening of antic lunacy.

Second Hand is the New York-based male trio--Paul Gordon, Andy Horowitz and Greg O’Brien--who are, no surprise, Broadway-bound later this year. In the venerable tradition of commedia dell’arte or, indeed, today’s Cirque du Soleil, Second Hand, like such dance-trained companies as Pilobolus and Mummenschantz, employs the body as freewheeling, anti-gravity servant.

The trio veered from Dr. Seussian creations to human kaleidoscopes in a 12-part program in which plaid shirts, jeans, bathrobes, tights and goofy expressions also gave way to precision leaps and virile split-leg landings. “The Weird Sisters,” loosely based on Shakespeare’s “Macbeth,” set the tone with the trio as human totem pole accompanied by their own surreal screams.

“Three Tangos” was a delicious romp to the music of Weill, Stravinsky and Piazzolla, replete with slinking, preening and flashlights, wherein the dancers spotlighted various body parts. “Human Fly” saw the trio assume the guise of, well, a human fly, and in “Clackers” they produced percussive rhythms by kicking up their heels to their drum-adorned buttocks.

Together since 1987, Second Hand is an organic blend of male bonding that happens to deliver a spectacular show of premillennium perfection.