Mining the past.

Big Dance Theater, a small collective of dancers and actors, creates mysterious collages. The new one, Plan B, draws on a crazy quilt of sources: Kaspar Hauser, the famous "wild child" of nineteenth-century Germany; former President Nixon's "secret" tapes during the Watergate days; and films of a ceremonial Japanese dance. The films were found at Jacob's Pillow, where they had been stored since Ted Shawn and Ruth St. Denis shot them in 1920 in Tokyo. Choreographer Annie-B Parson and co-director Paul Lazar have cooked up a plot wherein Nixon and his secretary look for someone to commit a crime. The piece, at Dance Theater Workshop from September 23 to October 9, opens with the wistful Tymberly Canale trying to civilize herself. Parson says, "First she creates fire, then she creates clothing, and then she creates shelter." See www.dtw.org.