COLKER'S GIDDY SPIN.

COLKER'S GIDDY SPIN COMPANHIA DE DANCA DEBORAH COLKER JOYCE THEATER NEW YORK, NEW YORK FEBRUARY 16-20, 20000

Brazilian choreographer Deborah Colker's Rota (1997) is an embarrassment of riches, so chock-full of wonderful ideas that they crowd each other. Colker's imagination is so fertile that she tends to squander ideas; each half of her two-act, ninety-minute Rota could easily be expanded to fill an evening. Joined by seven men and seven women trained within an inch of their lives in ballet, gymnastics, and yoga, Colker creates a kaleidoscope of kinetic images, from ridiculous to sublime. The energetic dancers are obviously capable of any physical feat she confronts them with, and despite its compositional overabundance, the spectacle is definitely entertaining.

Backed by a blown-up road map detail--black lines and symbols on white backcloth and floor--Act One starts with enthusiastic dancers frolicking to a Mozart serenade; the steps are ballet, peppered with gender-neutral postmodern partnering. One supple woman lifts her foot to her mouth, bites it, then extends it straight up; another woman later repeats the motif. In beat-for-note unison the group turns pedestrian gestures into dance vocabulary: stroking their hair, scratching, flopping to the floor like rag dolls.

Compositionally, Colker is fond of diverting individuals or pairs from the group flow at surprising moments, redirecting our focus. The lively score, compiled by Berna Ceppas, Alexandre Kassin, and Sergio Mekler, blends Mozart and Schubert with disco and house music by the likes of Aphex Twin, Squarepusher, and The Chemical Brothers; the mix is surprisingly seamless. Midway through the four-movement first act, Colker ups the physical risk with daredevil lifts and flying dives into the ground that vaunt the performers' courage as well as agility.

Act Two begins with the most eloquently conceived and performed section of the work: Gravity. Inspired by the "atmosphere that surrounds astronauts," Colker moves her dancers in ultra-slow motion, topsy-turvy, as if gravity had been momentarily repealed. The style switches from the Paul Taylor-esque verve of Act One to a concentrated, technical unity, reminiscent of Merce Cunningham. Clad in Yame Reis's brief white leotards, the dancers move with flawless precision, whether extending into stratospheric attitudes or balancing on their heads. A woman walks gingerly along the interlocked arms of her mates while they create a shoulder-high conveyor belt. Another, perched on one foot, folds seamlessly from arabesque to fetal crouch. A man floats into a handstand.

Then, switching modes yet again to dancing with apparatus--an area explored with great eloquence and innovation by Elizabeth Streb--Colker's spectacular finale features a twenty-foot high wheel, activated by the climbing, swinging, jumping dancers. Despite Rota's stylistic schizophrenia, the final image of dancers, curled on the rings as the contraption spins like a Ferris wheel to the strains of Strauss's Blue Danube, is theatrical hyperbole that justifiably evokes astonished gasps and the explosive ovation of a delighted audience.