reviews
support and sustain one another with tic director. Her expansive, almost cere-
buoyant energy and amazing grace. A monial gestures delineate the hardscrab-
trio in which Sands, Marciano Silva dos ble eloquence of a woman who works,
Santos, and Ned Sturgis ride the multi- prays, and suffers no nonsense.
textured music with fluid sensuality con- In Ash and Dust Pierce-Sands plays a
trasts with a grounded solo by Toni similar role to different effect—a woman
Pierce-Sands, TU Dance's other co-artis- trapped in her aging body who simultane-
Where Tradition
Meets Innovation
Mills CoUege offers BA, MA, and MFA
degrees in dance featuring:
• Internationally renowned guest artists
from NY to SF
• Performance and choreographic
opportunities from proscenium stage
CO siudio
• Repertory Dance Gsmpany perfomaing
work by Trisha Brown, Molissa Fenley,
Margaret Jenkins, Mark Morris, and
Paul Taylor
• Collaborations with distinguished
Mills graduate programs
For more information
call or email today;
510.430.2175
dance@milis.edu
MILLS www. mills.edu/dance
TH€
The Ruth P o g e
CeNT€R
C e n t e r f o rt h e ñrts
IMM€DlñT€.
FnR RۖCHING.
THÇ CfNT€R, locotcd in Q
historic building in Chicago's
Gold Coost, is home to o
Luorld-rcnouuncd School of
Donee, eight In-Resident
orgonizotions, Q 200-seat
theoter, ond is o centrai
meeting place for Chicago's
vibrant dance scene.
ously embodies girl, woman, and crone.
Her sculpted shapes and weighted, some-
times grotesque gestures (gnarled hands,
palsied limbs) suggest classic modern
dance injected with Butoh's contorted and
fiercely compacted physicality. The hoys
and girls who flit and gambol around her
could be memories of herself as a young
woman, lost loves, or even her children.
Suddenly we are transported to a mythic
landscape inhabited by exotic amalgams
of nymphs, fawns, and satyrs who tender-
ly guide Pierce-Sands toward death and
transformation. In one startling image the
men bare their torsos, stretching T-shirts
over their heads and arms like menacing
minotaurs. In another, dancers pulsate
like sea anemones, manifesting Pierce-
Sands' diminishing life force. Ash and
Dust demonstrates Sands' ability to create
luminous dances that are clear, cohesive,
and ultimately mysterious.
Compagnie
Maguy Marin
The Joyce Theater, NYC
June 17-22,2008
Reviewed by Susan Yung
Umwelt
Maguy Marin's Umwelt is not an easy
piece any way you look at it—neither
for her nine dancer/actors to perform
nor for the audience to watch. It doesn't
remotely resemble either a traditional
dance performance or something in
opposition—that is, say, devoid of move-
ment or sound. It is more like boot
camp, or a colonie, and watching the
entire show (many at the Joyce didn't)
has a cathartic, exhilarating, if definitely
earned, effect. It is rigorous, unsubtle,
 reviews

highly structured, and inspired. And it is images intensify, speed up, and accumu Every so often, under lights that shift
proof that Marin is among the most late, film-hke, into a time-lapse vision, the focus to the audience, one or more
politically and culturally incisive chore- like a day rewound in the mind. performers simply stare out at us, who
ographers working today. Activities that sustain life mingle with have been transformed into witnesses,
The crux of the work is a simple loop- periodic threats to life, or ways to cat- accomplices, or enablers. They seem to
ing sequence traced, usually, by two or alyze or manage its end. It is at first be saying, "Why aren't you doing any-
more dancers. They emerge from behind exciting, then shocking, then numbing. thing to heip?" •
a stand of layered reflective panels, do
something, and disappear again. The tasks
begin tamely enough: eating an apple,
donning a play crown or hat, kissing one SARAH-LAWRENCE-COLLEGE
another. They are performed amid
adverse circumstances—an onslaught of
liigh winds from offstage fans, and grating MFA in
sound (by Denis Mariotte), emanating
from a rope crossing three colorful guitars
with the aid of motorized pulleys, set
downstage. Soon every day banalities,
including tasks best done behind closed
doors, are peppered with militaristic or
DANCE Sarah Rudner, Director
religious imagery. Slabs of meat carried by
a leg alternate with nude female bodies
slung over a shoulder. Baby dolls dandled
overhead become fodder for kicking; peo-
ple eating Henry VIII sized turkey legs For more information, contact: Graduate Studies
(and discarding them after just a bite) are Sarah Lawrence College
replaced by canine-like creatures dragging 1 Mead Way, Bronxville, NY 10708
fowl with their teeth. People with flash-
Tel: (914) 395-2371 or visit us at
lights, perhaps looking for a lost item,
turn into trench-coated spies bearing www.sarahiawrence.edu/dance
searchlights.
Over the course of the hour, the

REVIEWS ON THE WEB

Read about PNB, Ratmansky's new
Flames of Paris, the Montpellier festi-
inward outward
val, the Venice Biennale, Cedar Lake
(with video link!), and more at
wwvi/.dancemagazine.com.
BFA in Perfûrmance
Rigorous interdisciplinary Iramrng
Susanne Linke,
at the Venice in dance, acting and vocal work
Biennale
grounded in the rich experiential

and intellectual traditions

of contemplative education.

Naropa
Boulder. Colorado • 800-772-6951

www.naropa.edu/bfaperformance