Ciagio program creates little magic

The Ciagio Collective, directed by Rande Dorn, with co-directors Shelby Curtis, Ken Datugan and Vanessa Jue, landed at Electric Lodge on Friday with a collective thud. An aggregate said to fuse dance idioms, musical theater and low-tech gadgetry into literary commentary, there was professionally little to offer, in any arena, especially with gizmos, where ersatz magic acts featured stuffed rabbits peeping from unfortunate costumes and a few scarves were pulled from gaping mouths.

“Sitting Single, Sadly Spilling Strange Stories,” Dorn’s juvenile solo, danced by Datugan, was notable for the performer: A short, stocky, perpetually smiling, skittering presence, Datugan has an endearing, if freakish, quality. One wished he had movements to equal his chutzpah.

Datugan’s choreography, “Married Wall,” offered nothing fresh: Molly Headley and Jessica Olsen did splits and handstands against a wall to Richard Greenhill’s mawkish score. Curtis and Jue showed spark with their “Wonderlust,” an athletic gambit in toe shoes performed by the duo and Yvette B. Franco. Set to Bjork’s music, it was a kind of saucy yoga on pointe.

Dorn’s painful 45-minute “Witness Our Protagonist Pull a Rabbit From a Hollowed Backbone” was a schizoid, six-person (formed from the Collective plus Alyson Boell and Beth Calarco) account of Dorn’s experiences as singer, wife, “comedic genius,” choreographer and musical theater performer.

Staged as an audition -- with head shots, rejections and requisite grumblings -- the work, with a pastiche of Broadway tunes, proved tediously indulgent.

Whatever talent may have been on stage, more than slipshod magic was needed to extract it.