Layard Thompson's warrior ways

Performance, if done right, is shamanism--skillfully skateboarding that sweet, demilitarized zone between worlds and tipping over either border with just the right combination of courage, childlike trust and sheer insouciance. That's why Layard Thompson--shapeshifting dancer and Deborah Hay mentee--stood head and fairy-dusted shoulders above anyone else on the Performance Mix program this week at Joyce SoHo. (Claudia La Rocco lays it out pretty clearly in her Times piece today.) Performing The Warrior--his adaptation of Hay's The Runner--looks as if he has either escaped from a ballet school or invaded one with a pair of scissors as his weapon of choice. He's a rebel...and his face is a mess. Not only does he run with scissors--defying worrying mothers everywhere--but he wields them with glamour and simmering menace that feels as if they are generated from deep within as opposed to being contrived and applied from the outside. In a time when a young audience for contemporary dance seems content with hip, wacky absurdities as sources of easy laughs and easy shocks, Thompson gives us the shocks that catch those laughs in our throats and make us wonder if those flimsy seats we're sitting on might give way and slip us into the chaos. Best of that Mix program because he's convincing, a true star--Layard Thompson.