`Different' Not Better.

Altogether Different Festival 2002 The Joyce Theater New York, New York January 3-20, 2002

Altogether Different Festival 2002 wasn't just an anomaly in its size--the Joyce Theater presented six companies instead of its usual seven--but also in its career level. The festival has always been regarded as an event for young choreographers to test the waters of a larger stage. But this season, emerging troupes were replaced by a lineup of mid-career artists. (Even though Complexions is still relatively young, it doesn't genuinely fit into the former category; touring and commissions have been built upon the celebrity of its founders.) The work that ensued was largely prosaic and safe, especially from the two companies making Joyce debuts, Paradigm and Merifin Soto Dance and Performance.

Paradigm features three modern dance legends--Carmen de Lavallade, Gus Solomons jr (the company's main choreographer), and Dudley Williams. For his No Ice in Poland, the most satisfying piece on the program (there were weaker offerings by Robert Battle and Dwight Rhoden), Solomons selected the appropriately elegant music of Chopin. De Lavallade began the piece alone, her lithe frame draped in a royal-blue dress that billowed onto the floor around her; in time with the music, her wrists and fingers flickered across imaginary piano keys--if anyone could infuse such juvenile movement with importance, it is she--but such fleeting scenarios proved hollow. Perhaps Solomons isn't quite finished with it; each duet and trio that followed, no matter how bittersweet or playful, seemed to reinforce a suspicion that No Ice is a sketch. But there is potential.

That the three mature performers have innate presence is unquestionable, but they were given little absorbing material to flesh out. Since they weren't provided with many challenges--which has nothing to do with virtuosic tricks--they were forced to carve out emotion through gesture, thereby lending movement melodramatic shading. To create a narrative out of a gesture is fine, but the audience shouldn't always see it unfolding as if it's a musical visualization. And this was the true pity: Instead of appearing distinguished, this trio often ended up looking old.

The Puerto Rican-born Merian Soto presented two works paying homage to Latin dance. In her solo Prequel (a): Deconstruction of a Passion for Salsa, Soto flicked through a pile of records to play on an old phonograph; snippets of black-and-white musicals and excerpts from The Red Shoes screened onstage. Part flashback and part collage, Prequel is an attempt to give the salsa some postmodern flair. (She later recording herself clapping and singing and dancing to her own reverb.) But her attempts at being both sensuous and loose fell short; her many costume changes, clever at first, became tedious. When she dramatically strapped on a pair of shiny red shoes--and showed how her feet won't sit still--we got it. Mainly, this journey through the history of the salsa is theatrically flawed; Soto, through all her "possessed" dancing, comes off as being little more than self-involved.

The choreographer's second piece, the raucous Asi se baila un Son (How to Dance a Son Montuno), features music by Adalberto Alvarez and an eight-piece band--and that component is fabulous. Unfortunately, the choreography meanders. Soto credited her dancers, who include Sonny Allen, Sita Frederick, and Antonio Ramos, with helping to create the movement, but what became quite clear by the finale is that she should have spent more time being a good editor. Soto's attempts at informality resulted in a free-for-all that, strangely, lacked spontaneity.

In Asphalt, Jane Comfort forgoes her usual dance theater for dance opera--but what it came down to was simply earnest theater. Set in an urban landscape of a squat, Asphalt relates the story of Racine (Manchild), a homeless DJ who remembers nothing about his past until he meets Couchette (Aleta Hayes), who cryptically introduces him to the spirits of his past. Asphalt is the product of four main collaborators: Comfort, listed as choreographer and director, works with Carl Hancock Rux (book and lyrics), Toshi Reagon (vocal score), and DJ Spooky (instrumental score). A critical problem with the evening-length work is in the repetitive, flowery writing; though Hayes injected her lines with passion, Manchild is so disconnected from the events supposedly so important in his tattered life that Asphalt dissolves into preachy sentiment. The work culminates in an inhibited rave--but it never takes off as a dance. The styles, which include African dance, hip-hop, and modern movement, never really mesh, but perhaps it has more to do with the rave itself. Like Soto's Asi se baila un Son, Comfort's social setting doesn't translate to the stage.

Another attempt at theater (but this time the flavor was decidedly vaudevillian) was David Dorfman and Dan Froot's Shtuck, an evening-length work that illustrates how two dancers are so obsessed with being onstage that they can't function in real life. The piece began badly: As audience members entered the theater, the pair, poised at opposite ends of the stage, called out to audience members with creepy familiarity. "Hi, what's your name?" they asked repeatedly. "You look great today! We've got a great show for you."

Dorfman's and Froot's inane chatter may have been integral to the piece, but it was grating all the same. When Dorfman asked Froot, "Where are you from?" the latter could only reply, "Downstage left." We learn that there are three things to know about the stage: Location, location, location. (The humor is appallingly broad.) A slippery X marked center stage on the floor (it moved), and as they hopelessly chased it, the intent behind Shtuck--to be the center of attention--couldn't be more obvious. It was also never as dark and smart as it was abrasive and silly.

Molissa Fenley presented a more sophisticated evening of dance that began with Pola'a, a mesmerizing and sweeping duet between the choreographer and New York City Ballet principal Peter Boal, one of the finest dancers of his generation. Funnily enough, Fenley never retreated long enough to give him center stage (she, it seems, is truly "shtuck"), but it was still a wholly engaging piece--expansive, luminous, and full-bodied. The music, from Lou Harrison's Elegiac Symphony, melds perfectly with the work's orderly, classical structure and the seemingly chaotic change of directions that are never out of control, but startlingly satisfying in flow.

At 47, Fenley is still a charismatic dancer with appropriate range, but it is only when she steps out of her group works--and, unfortunately, it only happened once, in short stories--that the choreography takes over. When she is onstage, her dances tend to become duets: There is Fenley, and there are the rest of the dancers. Not only do they appear nervous--hardly a good look for a dancer--they aren't able to inflect the movement with Fenley's smooth rigor, and the dances suffer. In Delta, set to music by John Cage, Fenley was joined by Ori Flomin and Paz Tanjuaquio; they each took turns wearing a mask, but instead of lending the piece meaning, it seemed a random gimmick. 331 Steps, a bit more successful, featured Fenley, Tanjuaquio and Lesley Braithwaite wearing costumes that each boasted a long train of fabric that tangled and untangled artfully. But it was the powerful first half of short stories, the revival of "Hemispheres Finale" (1983) that was really worth waiting for--here, through brisk movement and clean patterns, her dancers had energy (notably Braithwaite and the voluptuous Nora Chipaumire)--a chance to shine in the spotlight. And they delivered.

IT'S TRUE THAT COMPLEXIONS, where the flame of thrash-and-crash ballet burns eternal, is much improved since its first Altogether season. But Dwight Rhoden's choreography stills falls on the hollow side. The company, which seems to add up to little more than a vanity project, is not wedded to one particular style, though a command of ballet and traditional modern dance seems to be the rule. Among the twenty-one dancers listed (nineteen appeared at the Joyce), many are stars of the dance world, namely company co-founder Desmond Richardson, Sarita Allen, Don Bellamy, Edwaard Liang, and Solange Sandy-Groves. But Rhoden's choreography--he has no apparent sense of theater--results in a mush of music-video movement. No matter what music he's using, whether it is Antonio Carlos Scott in From Me to You in About Half the Time or Earth Wind & Fire in the energetic Higher Ground, Rhoden creates little more than combative partnering. Positions were fiercely hit-dancers struck the air with hard-edged developpes (over and over again)--but it doesn't mean they looked good, especially the women, who essentially appeared to be props for the men. As a choreographer, Rhoden seems to have three inspirations--lap dancing, figure skating, and William Forsythe. It might not be what he intends; nevertheless, in his attempt to showcase the urban side of ballet with flashy, contemporary movement, what is missing--how dance, music, and theatrics fit together--is too crucial a point to overlook.