Coyote Dancers.

SYLVIA AND DANNY KAYE PLAYHOUSE SEPTEMBER 16-17, 1995 REVIEWED BY AMANDA SMITH

Had Maher Benham's ambitious concert for her company (forty-two dancers, eight dances) been the work of a fledgling choreographer, it would have seemed promising. But Benham has been around long enough to be on the faculty of the Graham School, and she often falls into the copycat trap of those who have lived long in that technique. (Have only Cunningham and Taylor escaped Graham's long choreographic shadow with integrity?) Surprisingly, she has also failed to learn Graham's great lessons of psychological portrayal and form.

In Maher, It's Donald, a solo for herself full of unresolved nervous energy and performed to a tape assembled from messages left on her answering machine, Benham moves spasmodically from folding chair to open space, but neither the concept nor the steps seem original. Her group works are characterized by a need for editing (as in the far-too-long trio The Crossing) and a mushiness of choreographic intent. Why are there three couples in Passion Flowers: Journey to Ecstasy, since they so often perform unison movement? Where is the strength of counterpoint? Night of Light, for twelve women in white who often move in a circle, is watered-down Graham, Primitive Mysteries in jogging bras. Braithrean Triuir: Brothers Three, performed to bagpipe played live, catches two killed men somewhere between Scottish dance and indefinable angst.

Sipapu: The Land Where Your Eyes First Opened comes from Graham's large cast Greek dramas. An indecipherable all-male cortege (including Graham's former partner, Stuart Hodes), the work does the older dancers no favors, costuming and mixing men in their seventies with those in their teens or twenties. The roles are not clearly delineated, nor are the characters' motivations. In Graham, you always know what the angst is about. In this choreogapher's work, you don't.