Foreign Bodies.

Foreign Bodies Diavolo Hollywood Bowl, Los Angeles, CA, September 4, 2007

In an awesome, one-night only collaboration, Diavolo, the Los Angeles-based, risk-intensive, hyper-physical troupe founded and directed by Jacques Helm, danced Salonen. That's Esa-Pekka Salonen, music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic and composer of the 20-minute, three-movement opus, Foreign Bodies. Conducting the work, spiritually akin to Stravinsky, which he envisioned as a "ballet" when he wrote it in 2001, Salonen led the full orchestra in a masterful reading that united the cerebral with the visceral.

The stars of the night, however, were not only the 10 members of Diavolo, nailing each daunting move with Olympian precision, but the 800-pound, 7-by-10 foot aluminum cube, designed by Tina Trefethen, that has more configurations than Mr. Rubik's. In it, Helm, known for his work with kinetic architectural structures, has created a 21st-century prop for the ages--and movement to match.

Framed by the iconic Hollywood Bowl shell and with the orchestra behind them, Diavolo, hidden inside the cube, emerged after the opening bars boomed with percussion and pulsating brass. Arms jauntily appeared through the cube's holes, heads and bodies followed to the accompaniment of swelling strings--as if an egg were cracking open revealing new life. Then, in a gasp-worthy moment, the cube broke apart and, Sisyphus-like, the dancers pushed the deconstructed sections together to create a pyramid in this mutating landscape.

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Foreign Bodies is rife with metaphor. From a foreigner in a different country (Heim is from France, Salonen from Finland) to that of a swiftly changing landscape--one shoving us about, by physicalizing these notions--the dancers performed astonishing feats of balance, strength, and agility as they maneuvered the massive metal sculpture from cube to a platform bridge, to a trio of pyramids and a dangerous wall.

Gorgeous partnering and genuine emotion also coursed through the work, with the quieter second movement oozing eroticism. It featured the performers in yearning mode, their outstretched arms beckoning--and finding--comfort amid isolation and chaos.

The third movement pulled no punches. Whether leaping from atop the cube (at one point, seemingly inches from Salonen) into each other's arms or from triangle to triangle, the dancing gymnasts stunned with ferocious determination and derring-do. As the orchestra accelerated, every beat a thrill-seeker's paradise, the piece came to a magnificent close, the structure returning to a simple cube on the final crashing chord.

The audience, 9,750 strong, leapt to their feet, knowing they had witnessed a piece of Los Angeles history--dance and otherwise.