Movement Research at the Judson Church.

JUDSON MEMORIAL CHURCH SEPTEMBER 30, 1996-JANUARY 20, 1997 REVIEWED BY ROSE ANNE THOM

The crowds that gather on the steps of Judson Memorial Church on Monday evenings wait for an unusual kind of dance performance: a free one. Each week Movement Research presents the work of two or three artists, newcomers and old-timers, in the church's large sanctuary. The informality of the setup imparts a workshop atmosphere to the proceedings; in the seven performances that I observed there were both highly polished and ragged dances, some improvisational, others works in progress. More often than not, the choreographers used text, speech, or songs with meaningful" lyrics, relying on words rather than movement when determined to make a statement. Their work represented, in varying degrees of artistry, some of the variety of late twentieth-century modern dance. At better than bargain prices, these evenings provide a valuable resource for dance lovers, audiences and artists alike.

The impressions left by Wally Cardona's dances, both works in progress, were among the strongest. (Cardona is one of Movement Research's artists in residence; the others are Ivan Ossoinak and Annie lobst.) Monster Suite, danced by Kimberly Bartosik, Wen-Long Li, Kathryn Sanders, and Cardona, investigated formal structures with full-bodied, expansive movement made all the more interesting as each dancer made subtle physical alterations and surprising dynamic shiks. The intensity of their interaction increased in a complex daisy chain, while the "monster" imagery surfaced in ominous lunges, crooked elbows, and splayed fingers. A Double Emploi/A Double Purpose combined French choreographer Herve Robbe and three of his dancers, Guillaume Cuvilliez, Nicolas Heritier, and Shlomi Tuizer, with Cardona's troupe. The same fascinating manipulation of spatial relationships, this time focused on mirror imagery, was explored in this piece, but the doubling of numbers (four to eight), made it more difficult to absorb.

Robbe presented an excerpt from his own V.O. Brest. Four men created an atmosphere of contained power as each revealed his strength through intense concentration and vivid technique. The dance concluded brilliantly with an understated effect of a chorus line.

Another guest from Europe, Julyen Hamilton, was an outstanding participant in an evening of improvisation. Although his random use of speech was often gratuitous, his tone complemented the even, unhurried measure of dancing, which varied from poses in a deep Second Position squat to playful, tensionless gallops.

Carl Hancock Rux, like Hamilton, was one of the few who used language well, for his percussive barrage of words effectively created a rhythmic counterpoint to the dancing in his Three Poems to Live By. His collaborator, Christalyn E. Wright, punctuated his text with abrupt isolations at one moment and fluid arm ripples the next.

Also notable was Sham Mosher's Brother Mine, a passionate duet for Darrell Jones and himself. As if controlled by sheer instinct, the men avoided eye contact and touch initiated with their hands. They seemed propelled by their heads as they lunged at one another, then tentatively rubbed necks. Separating, then reconnecting, their successive interactions expanded with breathtakingly unexpected physicality as they lifted and leapt onto one another, concluding the duet with one cradling the other.

Ellis Wood's incorporation of gymnastic flexibility and contortion heightened the drama of her dancing, particularly in her duet with Carla Rudiger, Violent Silence. The fanciful, absurdist duet, Mermaid Tales, choreographed and performed by Karen Sherman and Tanya Gagne, told the tale of two eighteenth-century women who became pirates and somehow ended up in Hawaii? These women had a wonderful way with concrete imagery (mimicking sailors and pirates) and props, from inflatable swords to Pollerblades. The piece was vividly supported by a wacky sound track mixed by James Lo. Sherman and Gagne bogged down only in sections of "pure" dancing, where, instead of invention, they settled for campy parodies of synchronized symmetry.

On another evening, a moment of delicious humor came in an apology by a member of the Movement Research staff who had misunderstood a title transmitted over the telephone. It was between gulps of convulsive laughter that she informed us that the title of a work by Dennis O'Connor and Phillip Adams was not Mitsy and Beade in East Seattle but Mitsy and Beade Eat the Apple. The spontaneity of her unexpected performance prompted the entire audience to laughter and, really, Mitsy and Beade in East Seattle would have served the dance just as well.