An Appalachian Summer Festival NCNY Dance.

FARTHING AUDITORIUM, APPALACHIAN STATE UNIVERSITY, BOONE, N.C. JULY 13, 1997

NCNY Dance--an enterprise jointly founded by violinist Gil Morgenstern and dancer-choreographer Mary Cochran--is not merely about bringing back the nearly lost art of pairing live dancers with live musicians in performance. It's also about exploring the ways in which they can interact, how they can affect and inspire one another. Dance and music have equal stature, in other words. With that goal in mind, the troupe's second season must be deemed only partially successful.

Why not perform music as fresh as the new dances? One of the most interesting pieces of the evening, resident choreographer Sara Hook's A Minor Bombast, contrasted wild and crazy disco-style mating rituals with the staid prettiness of delicate piano music by Mendelssohn and Brahms. In the abstract, the juxtaposition made its point, but pianist Brian Zeger's thoroughly competent but thoroughly lifeless performance made clear his resignation at having a secondary position in this collaboration.

And so it went with most of the musical performances, which did not muster much more than ballet-studio energy. None of the choreography (by Margie Gillis, Mark Dendy, Thomas Patrick, Peter Sparling, Karla Wolfangle, and Cochran) explored the possibility of direct physical interaction between dancer and musician. Still, some pieces (Gillis's Slipstream, to a movement from one of Bach's solo cello suites; Wolfangle's Gray Matters, to Ravel) had more sophisticated, more abstract agendas than others (Cochran's Whatever It Takes, to unlikely music by Prokofiev; Dendy's First Chair, to slow music from one of Schubert's piano trios).

The dancing itself was mostly first-rate. Besides Cochran, Patrick, and Hook, the dancers included Gina Paolillo, Andrew LeBeau, and Jili Echo. Cellist Darrett Adkins completed the musical contingent.