Ultima Vez.

UCLA's Royce Hall, Los Angeles

May 2-3, 2008

Meathooks. Bricks. A solitary feather. These are some of the props that Belgian choreographer Wim Vandekeybus uses in his retrospective work, Spiegel (German for "mirror"). At 90 intermission-less minutes, the opus creates a netherworld, one where brutality butts up against fantasy and struggles of various stripes jostle for position in an increasingly dodgy universe.

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Ultima Vez (Spanish for "the last time") was founded in 1986. Spiegel, excerpts from six Vandekeybus classics strung together, is a reaffirmation of the troupe's ability to not only embrace sheer physicality but, in so doing, take its audience along for the perilous, yet satisfying ride. Opening the performance was an intense stomping section from What the Body Does Not Remember (1987). Featuring the nine dancers in unabashed fight-flight, rolling-trolling mode, one group lay prone on the floor, quivering and writhing while another furiously trampled around them.

This is definitely not your mother's modern dance.

The brick-tossing section, also from the same work, demands split-second timing. As cement stones are heaved amid the performers, they gain momentum, soaring over heads and into waiting hands. But the hazard factor morphed into wit as the segment concluded with a reference to classical Greek statuary.

From the ridiculously menacing to the sublime, humor continued with Manuel Ronda's feather dance. Chaplinesque, Ronda kept the plume aloft by blowing on it as he traversed the stage, the contrast between the heft of the brick and the airiness of the white wisp providing the perfect release.

Immer das Selbe gelogen (1991), featured five men vamping while exchanging costumes in a neo-burlesque bit, with a red dress-clad Ulrike Reinbott making the most of beseeching arms. Arno & Ad Cominotto's lyrics cautioned against a society seizing one's soul, while a pastiche of other composers, including David Byrne, served as sonic backdrops elsewhere.

Darkness again prevailed in the work's frightening finale, Inasmuch as Life Is Borrowed (2000). Dancers dangling from menacing meat hooks--when not making creepy throat-slicing gestures--became a tableau of grotesquery, with Vandekeybus, in the coda as a snorting, ground-pawing horse, pranced before settling down to sleep.

Whether a dream, warped reality, or a combination of both, Vandekeybus' vision continues to remain relevant.