A Few Missteps, Yet Bewitching

A winter’s night may not be ideal for staging an improvised dance in an outdoor parking lot, but that is what Trip Dance Theatre did on Friday at 18th Street Arts Complex when the company opened an evening titled “Soulstasis.”

The alfresco premiere of “Something Already Went,” directed by Dona Leonard and performed by Trip artistic director Monica Favand, Koala Yip and Leonard, was an exercise in redundancy: The trio emerged from a sport utility vehicle to perform a series of crouches, voraciously eat apples and collapse like unloosed marionettes. No wonder the highlight was an approaching car, whose driver paused to say “hello” before parking.

Moving indoors for the duration, “Skin Would Shed,” directed by Favand--and created and performed by the same trio--was another matter. Visually stunning and eerily bewitching, this provocative new work featured the dancers inhabiting upper-body casts, twigs sprouting from plaster heads, while standing rootedin holes cut from a large suspended sheet. With butoh-like moves, the dancers slid from their encasements, unleashing balancing poses, slinky patterns and glorious unisons--all under the stretched fabric--until they returned to their Favand-designed “bodies.”

“Eyecon” was stylishly choreographed and athletically performed by Yip. Less successful: “Free,” a premiere performed by Rebecca Butala and Elaine Wang, and 1997’s neon-lit “Imprint,” with Kaufman and Wang monotonously rolling their bodies over origami swans.