Emio Greco: the body as object.

IN 1995, under file company name Emio Greco/PC, Italian dancer/choreographer Emio Greco and Dutch dramaturg/director Pieter C. Scholten started searching for a new approach to dance. Since their first collaboration, audiences have been both intrigued and terrified by what they've seen, In these dances, one recognizes all extreme version of one's own moods and anxieties. The company's first American tour, which starts this month, will likely prompt similar responses. In his dances, Greco is caught ill all endless process of fragmentation, shifting, and displacement. It is a process that never seems to stop and never reveals a specific meaning. Greco and his dancers move jerkily, shrugging their shoulders and heads. Their soft silk costumes, wet from perspiration, become a second skin (like a fish skin). Backdrops of similar material extend the underwater image. In a recent interview, Greco explained that for Rimasto Orfano, they worked "from the fascination of the content of these words, which mean 'abandoned orphan,' and tried to merge both mental and physical reactions of the body." In performance, the dancers move from sustained stillness to eruptions of frantic quiverings, which melt into classical pirouettes and fouettes. "I interweave part of the classical technique with my own vocabulary to stimulate discussion," Greco says, "to open up an iron curtain, to explore another situation."

The effect of his dancing is akin to the sight of chanting, meditating monks. But Greco, who danced in Jan Fabre's performance pieces before his association with Scholten, sees it another way. "Meditation is not what we aim for. We want an awakeness, an awareness. Especially now, when society is fragile," Greco says. "The world is in a bad time. Something else emerges when we face the cruelty of life. Every performance is a dialogue, I want to pursue things, to create another reality."

Rimasto Orfano, which Emio Greco/PC will dance in most of the tour cities, is set to a composition by Bang on a Can's Michael Gordon. The wailing sirens in the beginning remind one of 9/11. "We discovered this by accident," says Greco. "We were already working on the score in Berlin months before before 9/11."

Rimasto Orfano opens with Japanese dancer Sawami Fukuoka wearing a blond wig standing under a simple light bulb exclaiming, "Greco is dead." The choreographer explains: "These words express the fear of being abandoned by yourself and your own inspiration. It is a declaration of my state of being. Being used by the outside world is an almost death experience."

Emio Greco/PC begins its 12-city U.S. tour April 1 in Ann Arbor, MI, and ends June 1 in Charleston, SC. www.multiartsprojects.com. www.emiogrecopc.nl.