James Sewell Ballet.

James Sewell Ballet Joyce Theater, NYC April 4-9, 2006 Yung, Susan

Power tools may not come to mind immediately when Garrison Keillor's name is mentioned, but James Sewell has done his best to correct that. Sewell recruited fellow Minnesotan Keillor to collaborate on his recent dance-theater concoction, Guy Noir: The Ballet, featuring a recurring private eye character on Keillor's radio show, A Prairie Home Companion.

Keillor recorded the voice-over for the ballet's story about a threatened woman in a competition (sponsored by Acme Tulle Co.) in which the entrants must dance with a tool. The result is a clunky, madcap caprice memorable for its sheer absurdity. There wasn't much dance, but the vacuum was filled by surreal spectacle. Guy Noir (Benjamin Johnson), in between crisp jazz moves, juggled a fedora, cigar, coat rack, and eventually Allegsa Goodthing (Peggy Seipp-Roy). In the competition, dancers parried with chainsaws, levels, tape measures, tree saws, and hand trucks; one dancer's tutu imitated the shape of a table-saw blade. (Kevin Jones designed the imaginative props with Mary Hansmeyer, who also created the costumes.) The high-quality sound and narrative was augmented by neo-noir music by Rich Dworsky and The Guy's All-Star Shoe Band, including lyrics written for Sewell's company.

Two other works completed the program. Anagram balances classicism with typical modern flourishes such as turned-in feet and bent wrists. Playful quirks defuse much of the preconceived stuffiness associated with ballet, as when a dancer strode down the aisle to be welcomed onstage by his peers. These types of gestures emphasize a sense of community that imbues the work. Sewell takes joy in the sheer physicality of ballet, and his dancers, rather than attempting to hide its difficulty, seem to relish working through their designated movement tasks.

Involution "is an abstract ballet that examines the flow of energy with the body," say the program notes, but it came across as tedium. Set to a New Age-y soundscape, dancers writhed, convulsed, and behaved as if they were diseased, an effect underscored by their sickly green unitards. A couple forced creepy smiles at us, inducing raised eyebrows but, sadly, no hidden meaning. The appeal of Sewell's company is not in the quality of his work, which varies. It's that his reverence for ballet is balanced by his eagerness to spoof it and his urge to explore outside its safe boundaries. See www.jsballet.org.