DANNY GROSSMAN DANCE COMPANY.

DANNY GROSSMAN DANCE COMPANY PREMIERE DANCE THEATRE, HARBOURFRONT CENTRE, TORONTO DECEMBER 1-5, 1998

Much felt familiar in the current season's presentations of Danny Grossman Dance Company, even in new work. Unlike last year's remarkable Passion Symphony, which hit the stage with raw emotion and intense engagement on a sensitive subject (sexuality in the church), in his latest program Grossman returned to favorite themes--social injustice, historical wrongs, the sense of mortality, and Charlie Parker's jazz--certainly no trivial assortment.

When Night Falls, a premiere by Lawrence Gradus, was a severely grounded solo for Monique Trudelle set to the music and words of Gustav Mahler's Songs of a Wayfarer. It required a great deal of commitment to follow the emotional elements as they unfolded, including sadness unrelieved to the point of unbearability.

Grossman's Hear the Lambs a-Cryin', performed to Negro spirituals sung by Paul Robeson, was a series of tableaux with a story punctuated by rape and lynching. Eddie Kastrau and Trudelle were a slave couple beset by a malevolent, violent, propertied community. The very literal presentation was almost overwhelmed by the power and expressiveness of Robeson's voice. The piece virtually called out for more inventive, subtler elaboration.

The most satisfying part of the evening was an excerpt from a work in progress, Chasing Bird, another homage by Grossman to his jazz idol Parker. (More than a decade ago he created Hot House: Thriving on a Riff for the National Ballet of Canada and his own dancers, using Parker's music.) This time the scene was a surreal and funky re-creation of musicians onstage, each dancer identified with the instrument played. Grossman himself was there almost as personification of the moment, all angles and oddly awkward in movement, but with great good humor. Kastrau simulated a wonderfully syncopated piano, Eddison B. Lindsay a mad, distracted drummer, and Gerald Michaud a remarkably versatile trumpet. They and others took turns at center stage to express the music of their instruments in the amazing counterpoint of jazz. The piece was commissioned by the Great Plains Symposium, to be premiered in Lincoln, Nebraska, in April.

The final work, no doubt intended as a crowd pleaser, was Peter Randazzo's zany A Simple Melody, a suite of mostly campy pieces danced to a sound collage of mainly pop music. It was funny enough two decades ago (it premiered at Toronto Dance Theatre in 1977), but seemed dated and not so amusing now.