Northwest New Works Festival.

NORTHWEST NEW WORKS FESTIVAL ON THE BOARDS, SEATTLE, WA APRIL 2-3, 9-10, 2005

The Northwest New Works Festival, an arts marathon of four programs and two live installations, combines material by the freshest of artists with new works from seasoned creators.

Portland's Gregg Bielemeier, who is definitely in the "experienced" category, has a reputation for creating fun and funky dances, which could make it easy to miss the craftsmanship beneath the stylish exterior. Left-Handed Chopstix certainly has the fun part down pat: Beth Graczyk and Amelia Reeber skitter across the stage in the kinetic equivalent of a giggle. The loopy, goofy physicality of the piece, which deconstructs or subverts traditional forms and academic positions, makes it feel simple and breezy--but funny is hard work, and Bielemeier has done his job well. Myriad details support the internal timing of the phrases and the juxtaposition of styles, from the vibration of the puffed-up hairdos to the eclectic sound mix, featuring Julie London and Johann Sebastian Bach.

...and to a cycle is a mysterious title, but the simple elements in this collaboration by choreographer Allison Van Dyck and composer/videographer Luke Allen make their biggest impact through repetition. The Seattle pair, who work together under the name SOM (sonic/optic/movement) Performance, re-explores ideas that have intrigued earlier mixed-media pioneers: looping visual and sound effects, playing with timing and ordering, making counterpoint between a projected image and an onstage dancer. They use those techniques here, putting a trio of women in front of a disconcerting video that combines pictures of drifting leaves and a slowly falling body. As the dancers work their way through a series of gestures and walking patterns, they gradually become subsumed, the stage lights fading and the video projection taking over, until finally the projected body and the real bodies both fall to the ground.

Surface, a lobby installation by movement artists Patrick Morgan Gracewood, Carla Mann, and Nat Newburger, also deals with the relationship between virtual and actual performance. Mann uses dancers as vehicles for movement but also as canvas, projecting video images onto performers, only to film them again and then rescreen that material on other bodies. Through editing she makes her performers disappear into that corporeal environment; they seem to exit in the space between an arm and a chest, or dance along the edge of someone's waist. It's a clever tromp l'oeil device, but it drains the movement of vigor, making us wish we could see the real thing without mediation.

Seattle choreographer Zoe Scofield has created a kind of feral ballet in I am nothing without you. Wearing droopy tulle skirts and white corsets over T-shirts, she and her cast might be a group of actual sylphs or swans, forest spirits who are seen only out of the corner of your eye. Leaning over to gather up their skirts and then scuttling along with their toes digging into the floor, they seem furtive, as if they were looking for shelter. Red stripes over their heads and down their backs mark them as part of the same flock, but when they step out in solos, their backs straighten and their gestures become more human, so that a meticulous step is matched with a delicate nose wipe. They remind us of the creature within every person.

For more information: www.ontheboards.org