Sean Curran Company; DTW's Bessie Schonberg Theater; New York, New York; February 24-March 15, 1998.

DTW'S BESSIE SCHONBERG THEATER FEBRUARY 24-MARCH 15, 1998

Each of Both was the most impressive of the three dances that Sean Curran premiered this season at Dance Theater Workshop. In this ensemble piece to Music by Ravel, Curran explores duets as building blocks of a larger, cohesive structure rather than as insular emotional components. Couples often coalesced into groups; others exchanged partners, disappeared, and reemerged in a steady stream of exits and entrances. The central duet, danced by Curran and Stefanie Bland, evoked the most concrete emotional imagery, but the steadfast formality of Curran's spatial design superseded specific interpretation. Clearly, form transcended content.

The dancing was always sensuous, full-bodied, and clearly etched in space. Sometimes the lower body looked positively balletic as dancers whipped through detailed allegro footwork or legato extensions, but classroom combinations were skewed when dancers' torsos convulsed or their arms frenetically slashed the air. The piece's strong visual effect was heightened by the dancers' chic costumes in grays, black, and white, and by Mark Randall's series of blurred black-and-white portraits that hung on large vertical panels across the backdrop.

In Curran's two new solos, one for himself, the other for guest artist Riso Steinberg, he stressed characterization that relied on gimmicks rather than form. Hegel's Vacation situated Steinberg, sporting a bowler and a black suit, as the philosopher examining three empty picture frames in a museum. The choreography, to Franz Joseph Haydn's music, offered alternating phrases of animated dancing with long intervals of idiosyncratic gesturing and inventive play with an umbrella. While Steinberg was fastidious in conveying the dynamic detail of both dance and mime, they did not add up to much.

In Real Boy, set to music by Janecek, Curran paired himself with an identically costumed wooden marionette hanging from the ceiling. Both had long pointed noses. Curran shuffled toward the marionette, muttering, "Real boy . . . real boy . . . Pinocchio" over and over. He laid the doll down, then broke into a relentlessly fast and furious dance, interrupting it with sudden stops. Curran returned to lie down beside the doll. As the lights dimmed, the marionette arose beside Curran's recumbent form.

If Curran does not always find the best balance between form and content, he at least knows when to end a work. Unlike many of his contemporaries, he is not self-indulgent. He also acknowledges his dancers by posting their photographs in the lobby. Also on this program were Enough 15 Too Much (1989) and Folk Dance for the Future (Traditional methods/Postmodern Techniques (1997-98), a lighthearted piece that drew on Curran's childhood studies of Irish step dancing.