Flashy moves highlight festival of solos, duets

Crowd-pleasing fare dominated this year’s installment of the Fountain Theatre’s Festival of Solos and Duets. To this end, the eighth-annual tasting menu of local choreography opened Friday night with Cate Caplin and Gary Franco’s “Night and Day,” an old-fashioned ballroom number that gave a wink and a nod to Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers not only in its title, but also in the easygoing rapport the two shared.

Bookending the evening on a similarly showy note was Christine Baltes’ “Syncopated Style,” a by-the-book jazz trio danced by Janell Burgess, Rachel Scott, and Richelle South. Despite the piece’s title, unison phrases as one-note as the relentlessly plodding drum-machine score prevailed.

Sandwiched between were brief works falling into a broadly defined category of modern dance, save for Swetha Bharadvaj’s sumptuous performance of “Ganesa Sthuthi,” a traditional Southern Indian dance in the Kuchipudi style in which alternating sections of driving foot rhythms and lyrical arm gestures supplicated audience and gods alike in an expansive dance prayer.

Another impressive performance was offered by Leslie Odom in Hilary Thomas’ spare “Open Arms.” Seesawing between moments of collapsing body parts and emboldened leaps and spins, the solo showcased Odom’s capacity for nuance and accomplished athleticism.

A favorable series of duets succeeded in communicating relationship dynamics through mastery of formal concerns. Laurie Cameron’s continuously modulated movement phrases in “In the Arena,” for example, provided a compositional structure in which to expand and rein in the absurd antics and blustering bravado of its cheerily confused yet competitive male protagonists, Daniel Senning and Jerrad Roberts.

Anne and Jeffrey Grimaldo (a.k.a. Naked With Shoes) likewise employed a rigorous construction to comic ends. In “Abdomen Soft and Flat” the geometry of their mismatched bodies (she tall, he short) inspired gizmo-like chains of reaction that parodied both tango and ballet pas de deux.

Classicism met release technique in the contrapuntal “flux and reflux,” with Weslie Ching and Hannah Turner gulping up stage space in a steady weave of solos and sculptural interactions. Though the piece would benefit from a larger venue and judicious pruning, it’s clear these young choreographers know how to inventively develop a movement idea.

Thin premises hampered Paula Present’s “Backbone” (performed by Chelsea Gilbert) and Diana MacNeil’s “Fanatic,” a character study for Jennifer Flanagan that relied too heavily on Raymond Scott’s bustling orchestral score and an assortment of props.

Less successful were Burgess’ overwrought “Fields and Foothills” (danced by Leann Alduenda) and Loren Denker’s gestural monologue “Don’t Speak,” which would have fared better with the addition of movement that could speak for itself.