Carella's salon

I think Dalia Carella was channeling Dorothy Lamour last night at the tiny White Box Theater of 440 Studios, flower in hair and everything, at least for Turkish Roman and Near Eastern Contemporary Dance, two girlishly cute solos that demonstrated her fastidious muscular control. It's tempting to go macro with these types of movements, to wow the crowd. It's harder and less obvious--and, it turns out, more crowd-wowing--to make these movements small, keeping energy close, like silver electricity racing through one's veins. Carella does this very well and with a movie star smile that tries to convince us that it's no trouble at all. It's plenty trouble.

She's also capable of elegantly channeling Ruth St. Denis, as she did in Destiny, a sculpted solo inspired by fado, the lamentful music of Portugal. But as an artist noted for straying across cultural boundaries with abandon, she's hard to label. From Near Eastern to flamenco, from Bollywood to Roma dance, from ballet to salsa, Carella has absorbed the finer points of the world's most flavorful dancing. I've no doubt she's still learning, still picking up and tucking things away in her satchel. Wonderful! Except when it comes to convincing a presenter to take you on. So, she self-produced her evening in this less than optimal space, calling it a salon and showing off not only her admirable skills but also the performing and choreographic talents of members of her Dalia Carella Dance Collective.

The resulting mixed bag offered much to appreciate, especially the economical use of time in the service of the idea of a dance. Hannah Nour's self-made solo Yearning, Davey "Mashala" Mitchell's handsome performance in his MotherEARTH, and Carella's Oulid Nayli, an ensemble based on Berber women's dances, show that their creators understand the focusing, illuminating power of just enough.

The Mad Marionettes, an awkward satirical ensemble by Carella, was the only piece that overstayed its welcome. In this dance, as well as the company's two-part premiere--Stepford Jives and Miss Manners Has a Meltdown--Carella uses contemporary dance movement and broad theatrical style to take on the issue of what it means for a woman and, surely, for a woman dancer, to be under male gaze and male control, and what it would mean to bust out from under. While the idea is far from new, Carella manages to perk it up in the newer work with attention to sharpness in all things, from movement to imaginative costuming, reminding me, in a way, of Monica Bill Barnes, another exacting maker of often exquisite, humorous dance theater.

So, with Carella, you get a little bit of everything--a fair amount of it of good value. She's an old-school entertainer that way, a rarity in these days. Let's hope she'll find a presenter with an all-embracing worldview to match her own.