Jaroslow: a meditation on partnership

The Partner Project/Scene in Public--a world premiere by Risa Jaroslow & Dancers at Danspace Project--is a dream of a dance, my idea of dance heaven, a seemingly bottomless cornucopia of good things. It lasts only 50 minutes but seems an eternity--and I mean that in a good way. I did not want it to end.

The Partner Project/Scene in Public is an apt, if unfortunately clunky, title. Partnership--and how human interactions appear to, or are shaped by, those who witness them--is indeed the project. But this title represents a dance filled with grace, relatedness and sensitive response. Jaroslow explores many journeys of human connection, and her discoveries are fresh, never literal or obvious, always evolving in surprising, quirky ways. Her dancers are so alive in their movement and in their interactions that you clearly detect the flow of subtle thoughts and feelings, not only actions.

It is a flow of dancey dance (and a profoundly dancer-loving dance) performed by some of the craftiest, most supple, most illuminating performers in the contemporary art--most notably, Luke Gutgsell, Elise Knudson, Rachel Lehrer and Paul Singh, the core quartet of the ten-member cast. (Composer Robert Een and percussionist Hearn Gadbois also perform Een's atmospheric original score live.) And so, if you have friends who are a little shy of dance or who might be willing to venture beyond The Nutcracker and Revelations this season, take them to this. But you'll have to move fast, since The Partner Project/Scene in Public, which opened only last night, closes tomorrow night.

With dancing by Chellamar Bernard, Marcos Duran, Briana Fails, Courtney Jackson, Anne Merrick and Laurel Snyder

With video by Barbara M. Bickart, lighting by Carol Mullins, costumes by Amanda Bujak and set by Jon Pope

The Partner Project/Scene in Public--tonight and tomorrow night at 8pm (information and ticketing)

Danspace Project

St. Mark's Church

131 Est 10th Street (at 2nd Avenue), Manhattan