JOHN JASPERSE COMPANY.

JOHN JASPERSE COMPANY DTW'S BESSIE SCHONBERG THEATER MAY 6-16, 1999

John Jasperse is a gifted young choreographer who can pursue a simple movement idea with obsessive rigor. His new Madison as I imagine it evinces intelligence and mature choreographic skill. Set designer Scott Pask has devised a three-sided white room in elongated perspective with two oddly tilted tables in one corner which are resting on uneven stacks of blocks. Stan Pressner's active, subtle lighting illuminates the four dancers as if they were lab specimens or, from behind the translucent walls, throws them into shimmering silhouette. Hahn Rowe's sensitive score cradles the dancing in electronic gurgles, squawks, and whispers.

Jasperse's seventy-minute piece explores with wit and poignancy the expressive potential of body parts that are usually mere adjuncts to the dancing body: The fingers of Jasperse and Miguel Gutierrez--adorned with bright red nails--dance a little unison quartet, appearing disembodied from their supine owners. Later, their fingers tangle in intricate knots that they try to untie. In a lively group section the men, joined by the women, Parker Lutz and Juliette Mapp, shove each other around with legs like tentacles; their upper bodies are simply along for the ride.

In a funny duet, Jasperse and Lutz transform household gadgets into fashion accessories: she blindfolds him with a length of string; he wraps her in an aluminum-foil skirt; he shoes her foot with a rubber glove; a paper clip becomes his hair barrette. The two are then joined by Gutierrez and Mapp, who are wearing identical accoutrements.

Jasperse is a compositional craftsman, juxtaposing dynamic contrasts, dissolving quartets into duos, modifying solos with complementary background motifs by the others, keeping the stage alive with coherent, provocative imagery. Finally, all four lie down and let their soles nudge, stack, squiggle, and intertwine in a little ballet of their own. With unique inventiveness and poetic articulation Jasperse exalts heretofore ignoble body parts. He patiently, obsessively explores facets of his wonderfully perverse movement ideas with dynamic and spatial control and delightful disorientation--all of which enrich his quirky lexicon and replenish the contemporary dance vocabulary.