‘Noir’s’ Choreography Could Use More Heart

Toying superficially with the distorted gender roles and atmosphere of menace that have filtered down into pop culture from vintage B-films, Kitty McNamee’s new “Noir” added nothing to its sources but did at least provide a showcase for nine engaging dancers on Friday at the John Anson Ford Amphitheatre.

Except for the dancers and the distinctive costume-identities provided them by designer Grant Krajecki, you’d have guessed that nobody’s heart was in this full-evening project for McNamee’s Hysterica Dance Company. Certainly the potential for inter-media expression never materialized and the enormous rear-projection screen at the back of the stage mostly became another wall unit blocking the view and trying to make the outdoors seem like an interior corridor somewhere.

Dancers continually led one another into this corridor at the ends of duets--and you wanted to follow, because whatever they did offstage had to be more interesting than the undeveloped movement themes and secondhand vocabularies offered in place of coherent original choreography.

Yes, all the discontinuities were indeed deliberate, but McNamee’s use of them quickly became predictable--like her use of intersecting duets as a kind of dramatic structure. In Act 1, straight-arrow Jamie Thompson pursued bad-girl Erin Girau while Giraud’s usual partner, tough-guy Ryan Heffington, dallied with slinky Fiona Manners. In Act 2, Heffington belonged to the incomprehensibly distraught Shari Nyce, but McNamee found no expressive function for her second couple, Alicia Gilley and R.J. Durell.

Happily, the company looked accomplished in virtually every challenge: ballet, gymnastics, pop dance, gestural semaphore--even exaggerated physical comedy. Heffington, in particular, helped give the work what little edge it possessed by his unerringly taut, committed, individual and technically exact performances.

In the past, McNamee has dug deeper into her subjects, and one questions how much she’s seen of the earlier, better dance essays in the noir sensibility. What she seeks is an ironic, backdated style informed by contemporary sexuality and a sense of dread--elements more persuasively fused in Angelin Preljocaj’s remake of “Le Spectre de la Rose,” as well as works by Neil Greenberg, Jacques Heim, Melinda Ring and others.

Besides the Hysterica members previously mentioned, Kimo Keoke and Tom Serink also danced on Friday. The company performed to taped music by Irving Berlin, Tim Labor, Barry Adamson, John Zorn and, of course, noir master Bernard Herrmann. Julian Goldberger created the brief film sequences.