Fest Guests Think on Their Feet. (National).

Fest Guests Think on Their Feet Washington, D.C. Seventh International Improvisation Plus + Festival Various venues Washington, D.C., and vicinity November 29-December 9, 2001

Total immersion in this improvisation festival meant more than being at its five performances and two workshops. There were rehearsals that turned into unscheduled performances. Just hanging out with the participants between sessions was fun--serious fun. The Grand Festival Opening Performance, at George Washington University's Marvin Center, was the only one in a regular theater with the performers separated from the audience. That gulf can make improvisations look anything but spontaneous. Yet, when the dancers try to bridge the separation by being too casual, their motion skills may look amateurish.

The best balance struck that night between premeditation and mere doodling was by Giselle Ruzany, an improviser from Brazil's beaches who came to study in the U.S. Using variations on a sharply etched arabesque as a recurring theme in her translations #150, Ruzany seemed to be inventing movement, yet shaping it too. Close collaboration with her musician husband, Jonathan Modell, undoubtedly prevented needless straying. Daniel Burkholder's group of four dancers for in that exhausted place sustained a continuum of movement based on standard contact improvisation material, whereas the six dancers and seven musicians of Washington Free Collaboration, performing Damaged, came up with wild bursts of motion and sound that quickly petered out.

In White, Red, Blue, a trio of performers (Cyrus Khambatta, Sharon Mansur, and Maida Withers) shook off 1776 costumes and wigs. They continued to work with the shaking-off movements after these had served their purpose. Withers, the grande dame of this and previous improv festivals, spoke about improvisation during the post-show reception onstage. Of the costume piece, she said the intent had been to make a dramatic, "European" improvisation and the participants had been careful not to pre-plan it, lest it seem composed. In fact, little beyond the piece's premise appeared planned. Yet there wasn't much theatricality either. What stood out was the participants' persistence in exploring shaking movements--and this stubbornness not to abandon motion seemed to me very American.

An afternoon "Dance In" began as a guided tour through an exhibit of ceramics and tiles at the Art Museum of the Americas. The dancers (and musicians) explored movement in restricted spaces. (The museum's rooms were small and filled with objects and people, and the stairs were narrow.) Khambatta, shifting his body into cubist forms as he fit himself into a window niche, was a focus of attention. In at least one instance, the performers tackled a dramatic theme (the Bay of Pigs invasion), depicted in political-cartoon style on a set of tiles. When the event spilled out into the adjoining gardens, the scale of movement and volume of sound expanded suitably. That, and the summery weather on a winter day, contributed to everyone's good mood. At this event, some of the audience became part of the action, dodging the performers or picking up their rhythm. A pair of photographers, though, who kept closing in on the performers, gave the impression of having been rehearsed.

Finding the tiny community of Mt. Rainier, Maryland--site of the penultimate performance--was an adventure for the uninitiated. The experience helped build community, becoming the topic of conversation as people arrived at the actual space, Joe's Movement Emporium. The storefront informality of Joe's, and the fact that most onlookers were active participants in the festival, also forged bonds. The dance portions of the program were largely based on contact improvisation. Most skilled were the partners Lani Nahele (also known as Lisa Schmidt, a former member of the Trisha Brown company) and David Hurwith. She looks like a highly trained dancer, isn't afraid of displaying technique, and yet conveys the joy of finding good movement. He's got movement skills, though he possesses neither a dancer's body nor practiced ease. In Right Appetite, they developed a movement conversation with rapid exchanges, flirtatious teasing, even telling silences. More than anyone else I saw, Nahele and Hurwith used facial expressions, and did so subtly. Quicksilver, the senior women dancers who concluded this program, worked with a young male musician, Anthony Hyatt, and it was the gender and age contrast between them and him that made their otherwise careful and controlled work dramatic.

To get full value, one had to be a mover in the festival and not just an observer. The biggest impact for this onlooker was made not by any of the movement that emerged, but by the dancers--particularly those that appeared repeatedly. Mansur, in D.C. again after a couple of years in New York, now moves across the floor like a freshly sharpened pencil. The laid-back Burkholder, who has a bit of the amplitude that young Paul Taylor embodied, could use some New York sharpening. Khambatta, a visitor from Seattle, created drama in the most abstract of sequences as he tried to discipline his nervous energy. Withers's determination to keep in motion and not freeze into stances was heroic.