Brave the cold tonight: BRINK at Dixon Place

Last night's frigid cold was not enough to keep progressive dance luminaries--from Movement Research, Chocolate Factory and the like--from turning out in support of Kathy Wasik and Stacy Grossfield, both choreographers showing works-in-progress at Dixon Place. These pieces couldn't be more different.

Wasik's low-key Real things, things, and ghost things (whose title might slip over onto Grossfield's dance without doing it much violence) utilizes a nearly bare space and two casually be-jeaned dancers (Wasik and Cara Angela Liguori) colliding in competition over attempts to build a house of cards. (Speaking of which, check this out.) As you might guess, the arc of Real things rises and falls on the two women's often tickling runs at and avoidance of building a personal connection. I most enjoyed watching Wasik's face--big, dark eyes full of potential warmth peering at Liguori, mouth sometimes evenly set, registering faint but detectable amusement, restrained sarcasm or genuine interest. If nothing else, this is a dance that proves that faces--and their gazes--dance.

For Grossfield's Red, Pink, Black, the audience gets displaced from its front-on arrangement--mainly, as far as I could tell, so drummer Anders Griffen could commandeer one of our seats and, also, so we could catch a good view of the theater's balcony. A nightmarish and interestingly childlike drama unfolds--visually and aurally overblown, like a pretend medieval carnival with ratty, makeshift costuming--performed by Grossfield, Nicole Daunic, Rebecca Warner and a hyperactive, amusingly menacing Joey Kipp.

DP's BRINK program, curated by Kim Brandt conclude this evening with a show at 7:30pm. Check in here for complete details and ticketing.

Dixon Place
161-A Chrystie Street (between Delancey and Rivington Streets), Manhattan
(map/directions)

The sum of zero

Dancer-choreographer Kathy Wasik's fantasia on the number Zero--in a two-piece evening by the same name at Triskelion Arts--sent me on a search for fun facts about the ubiquitous and useful numerical oval.

Did you know, for instance, that a null pointer is a pointer in a computer program that does not point to any object or function? Or that in classical music, 0 is very rarely used as a number for a composition: Anton Bruckner wrote a Symphony No. 0 in D minor and a Symphony No. 00; Alfred Schnittke also wrote a Symphony No. 0? Or that in lattice theory, 0 may denote the bottom element of a bounded lattice? [Thank you, Wikipedia!] What the dickens is lattice theory? Will this be on the test?

From childhood, I've loved individual numbers (and letters) as symbols and entities with something very much akin to their own personalities and force. An instinctual Kabbalist type thing, I guess. I appreciate Wasik's idea of communing with Zero--surely the most buoyant, elusive and intriguing of numerical personalities--throughout her solo, Zero. The piece has its moments of visual pleasure and of whimsy, but I can't say I got it or took away much from the willowy, resilient Wasik's dancing--a long, dream-like performance in which her movements might be a bit too lovely and technically-controlled to speak up for her and her presumably visionary intentions.

On the other hand, Learning to Fall--Wasik's mysterious solo for beautiful Cara Liguori--is a much more cunning study. It uses the power of silence, chiaroscuro lighting (by Andy Dickerson) and carefully selected movement to focus attention. We zoom in on the exacting way Liguori readjusts one wrist with her other hand. She takes her time. She appears as one eternally suspended, touching her face, her hand or her shoulder while her mind seems to dwell elsewhere. Even the dance's ending seems to float in front of us, never landing.

Zero continues tonight and tomorrow night at 8pm at Triskelion Arts, 118 N. 11th Street (3rd Fl. R), Williamsburg, near Bedford Avenue L station

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