Some DNA discoveries

With its choreography series, OB-ject-ob-JECT, Dance New Amsterdam fosters innovative collaboration among women artists working in various disciplines. This season--which ends tomorrow with a 3pm performance--offers a few good reasons to head to DNA now and to keep watch for more notable developments from its current roster of artists.

I'm most intrigued by the Italian, Amsterdam-based choreographer Giulia Mureddu. In Bava (US premiere), Mureddu duets with a squealing, mewling, man-sized puppet with spongey, bulging cloth flesh and hard, glassy eyes that sparkle under the lights. The puppet (designed by collaborator Ulrike Quade) seems to be fused with the dancer's body and with her soul. Her precise, sensitive manipulation of this figure not only creates an poignant, at times frightening illusion that it is alive but also displays alternating facets of a relationship both tender and terribly dark in nature. Bava is a kaleidoscopic, disturbing dream--and a brilliant execution of Mureddu and Quade's concept.

Soloist Marýa Wethers and choreographer Daria Faïn have made good on the promise of a work-in-progress I saw, last December, at 92nd Street Y. TARGET::furnace (phase one) seems to have clarified its purpose as a fantasy of the iconic woman hero/superhero/martial artist--She possessed of indomitable physical and mental acuity. In the opening segment, Wethers--wrapped in an oversized, thick terry cloth robe, with matching bath towels draped over her head, an amazing, sculptural costume--strides round and around with her game face on and her arms and fists raised in the gesture of a prize fighter. In another high-energy passage, Wethers unleashes her superpowers, spinning this way and that as she throws darts at Robert Kocik's wooden "target-objects." At times, TARGET (otherwise oddly titled, but Faïn and poet Kocik are noted for intricate investigation and word play) feels a little loose-thready. But its interesting conclusion hints at breakthrough to a consciousness beyond strength and heroism. Katherine Young's luscious score--performed live by Young (bassoon), Christine Bard (percussion) and Erica Dicker (violin)--contributes a fragrant, haunting sound bouquet.

In Mariangela Lopez's Accidental #5 (world premiere), a lone woman holding a pose I'd readily call "the kneeling Isadora Duncan" eventually gives way to a floor-full of women and men in weird-ass costumes, no two alike, who flail and jerk their bodies long and hard. Suddenly stopping, they pant, looking around in that way that you do when you're standing still and managing to hold yourself up but your brain seems to spinning in its skull. If Accidental #5, as it progresses, comes off looking like amateurish good-time romping--hey, let's all mass together and boogie down and hoot and holler!--I guess we can trace that back this ecstatic opening. There's a hella lotta energy here, which clearly sparked the audience around me last night; rousing hoots greeted the sixteen dancers and Lopez as they lined up for their bows. Hella lotta energy doesn't quite substitute for innovation, but Lopez does introduce a few unexpected ways of addressing space--by tucking a pocket of hot activity in a far corner, partly obscured by the wings or having her sixteen dancers form a many-headed, multi-faceted organism slowly crawling the rear of the space. A marvelous dancer herself, she's got an interesting eye for visual effects and a playful spirit bordering on the rebellious, and I just want her to totally cross that border and go there.

For more information on OB-ject-ob-JECT and ticketing for tonight (8pm) or tomorrow (3pm), click here.