Deborah Hay Dance Company at Danspace Project

As Holy Sites Go/duet--presented at the multiply-holy site of Danspace Project--often reminds me of the time I first saw a baby giraffe fold its spindly legs to sit on the ground. Deborah Hay's black-clad dancers--the sturdy-thighed and light-footed Jeanine Durning and severely-neat, delicately-spidery Ros Warby--also reminded me of marionettes without benefit of puppeteers. Maybe they've come alive at midnight and spied each other across the hushed, gaping yet resonant space (and time, yes, when little or nothing occurs) between lines of slender columns. Maybe their handlers have worked them side by side in rehearsals, but only the most basic inclinations remain in their arms and legs to give a ghostly momentum. They move at and close to each other and make tenuous, offbeat connections that look eerie, even creepy, because they don't seem to be based in conscious intent--or, at least, readable intent. They sing sweetly and incomprehensibly and not at all together and yet overlapping. Hay says the dances perform "catastrophic acts of perception," a thought to chew on while you're watching.

Deborah Hay Dance Company continues its run at Danspace Project tonight and Saturday at 8pm. For information and tickets, click here.

Danspace Project
St. Mark's Church in-the-Bowery
131 East 10th Street (at Second Avenue), Manhattan
(directions)