Stephen Petronio Company.

Joyce Theater New York, New York October 15-20, 2002

Stephen Petronio is possibly the least likely choreographer to have made a heartfelt memorial to the events of 9/11. His dense, abstract vocabulary isn't known for storytelling. For eighteen years, Petronio's fluid, gestural, upper-body shape-shifting and precise, almost fussy, hip-thrust balletic leg variations have intersected extravagant postmodern style. His flamboyant presence has galvanized the downtown scene. So who would have guessed that this guy was, at his core, a softy?

In Petronio's October program at The Joyce, the imprint of Trisha Brown, with whom he danced from 1979 to 1986, was still evident in his mathematical dance structures. His two new works seemed to speak not so much from previous inspirations, like the catwalk or the club scene, as from the heart. But they still resonated with a sort of inherent narcissism, an inescapable sensibility of libertine cool.

In 2000's short Prelude, the dancers' rooted swaggers seemed a throwback, juvenile almost, perhaps due to the cast's extreme youth and aggressive beauty. Attached at their hips across the front of the stage, the eight dancers (Petronio included) churned and preened and posed and snarled to a rock song by Placebo, their figurative gnashing of teeth suggesting Rodin's Gates of Hell.

A companion piece, Strange Attractors Part II, layered a boxing motif--punching, ducking, bobbing, and weaving--onto the strutting chic of Tanya Sarne's costume design. FOR ONE EXTENDED SECTION, THE SPECTACLE OF THE CAST'S UNISEX, BLACK, EXHIBITIONISTIC COSTUMES AGAINST THE RED CYCLORAMA BECAME A VOYEURISTIC PLEASURE, LIKE WATCHING A GOTH VALENTINE FASHION SHOOT IN A HIGH-END SOHO DEPARTMENT STORE. For all their evident flailing, the bodies often seemed inert somehow, struggling within their own kinespheres but not getting anywhere.

A surprisingly interpretable short new solo, Broken Man, performed by its creator, included recognizable gestures of beating heart and weeping that approached mime. A similar emotive linearity also leaked into the new group work, City of Twist, which began with a series of nuanced solos. First Gerald Casel, then lovely Jimena Paz, then tall Gino Grenek--all half undressed for some reason--danced self-revealingly, as if witnessing their truths.

Laurie Anderson's contemplative score, rich with organic and electronic instrumental variety, combined with projections of light (a half moon, columnar forms) to lend a specific sense of architectural place that jarred against Petronio's physicality. An isolated, urban community gradually introduced itself. Suddenly, these bodies were characters, not simply elements within a composition. They were still sexy, but in a traditional, homogenized way, unlike Petronio's previous subversive fetishism.

The dancers percolated with the same aggravated, interior straining against gravity and the center at multiple points simultaneously, as in the work of Edouard Lock, like a pugilism against the self. Spurts of slashing phrase material riveted the eye. The dancers seemed to be aware of the audience's gaze and flushed with vanity amid Petronio's typical visually complex composition.

But the elements of literal narrative that linked the dance to 9/11 (shapes of broken, fallen bodies on the floor, projections of fractured buildings, and fire-alarm strobe flashes) seemed extraneous. The external forms of genuine emotion jarred at first in the context of Petronio's signature showmanship. Then Ashleigh Leite appeared in a fringed dress dancing a solo. Her quicksilver changes of intent, complex multiple qualities, polyrhythms, and opposing body parts warred with Anderson's weeping strings to create a moving picture of grief.