Tens the Limit.

Green Street Studios Cambridge, Massachusetts May 2-3, 2007

CRASHarts, the dance-producing arm of Boston's World Music, has filled the vacuum left by the demise of Dance Umbrella several years ago by presenting visiting companies, and more important, works by local choreographers. In a nod to the Boston theater community's successful ten-minute play competition, CRASHarts now sponsors an annual spring weekend of performances called "Tens the Limit" to allow local dance-makers to showcase a new dance apiece. Twenty-six applicants were winnowed to eight finalists by guest adjudicator Laura Faure, director of the Bates College Summer Dance Festival.

The format might be considered an nnconscious nod to modern dance pioneer Doris Humphrey's instructions to choreographers to pare down movement invention to its essence. If novelty outshone craftsmanship, the most effective of the works employed either visual punch lines or repetition to make an impression, while several of the short works served to frame some terrific dancing.

Collaborators Jamie Jewett and Aaron Henderson (Lostwax Productions) presented Snowblind (music by Matmos) which featured a black-and-white film on the entire wall behind a single, undulating dancer, Mira Kim, performing against images of herself walking through urban streets and rural fields. The cinematography was as fluid as Kim's movements, presenting a dreamscape of inner longings, as if this woman were out of sync in one setting while longing for another.

Malinda Allen (The Moving Laboratory) stood onstage to conduct the choreotext she created, based on a poem by Marlene Nourbese Philip. Allen's work, In Telling or Tell Apart, portioned the poem out to a troupe of seven dancers, one word at a time, accompanied by a signature gesture which grew into movement phrases. Even with her back to the audience, Allen had no trouble establishing a personality of her own.

CHRISTINE REYNOLDS (FLIPSIDE DANCE THEATRE) WEIGHED IN WITH A MOVEMENT JOKE, POLITICALLY SPEAKING (MUSIC BY SOLAS FROM THE HOUR BEFORE DAWN), FOR A QUARTET OF DANCERS WEARING RUBBER MASKS OF THE FACES OF FOUR FORMER PRESIDENTS: JIMMY CARTER, BILL CLINTON, GEORGE BUSH (SENIOR), AND RONALD REAGAN (WITH, AT ONE POINT, HILLARY CLINTON, PERHAPS A PRESIDENTIAL WANNABE). The characters cavorted in hoedown patterns, occasionally shrugging their shoulders and raising their hands in the air, as a disclaimer of their actions.

Perhaps the most polished of the works was Snappy Dance Theater's Flip/Switch (music by Yann Tiersen) for seven dancers who slid through the space on each other's backs, morphing from one upside-down position to another. The handing-off of movement by one group to another implied the origin of the choreography in studio improvisations; it was directed by Martha Mason and Cathy Bosch; Mason also performed in the work.

Lorraine Chapman (Lorraine Chapman The Company) contributed an ambitious failure in storytelling, Just Another Stiff, Chapter One, A Corpse on Me, set to a sound collage, in her attempt to condense an entire chapter of a 1940s mystery by Carroll John Daly.

Assuming the Position, (music by Bruce Springsteen and DJ Shadow) choreography by Jil Mastrisciano with Serena Smith (She-Figured Dance), shoved too many ideas about the evolution of feminism into the short time, but gave the audience a look at the two choreographers as intriguing performers.

EgoArt, Inc.'s Jaunt (choreography by Nicole Pierce, music by Robert Schumann) paired each musical note with a step. Jody Weber and Dancers' Vox Silencia (music by Anouar Brahem) needed more time to develop either mood or movement theme. Despite the feeling of channel-surfing, the evening delivered an introduction to many of the talented choreographers who have made Boston home base.