Saturday, April 29, 2000
Minimalistic dancing is novel, but tiresome
By Carol Norris
Enquirer contributor
Maureen Fleming is a solo dance artist who is involved with some pretty heady collaborators.
Philip Glass provides most of the music in her full-evening After Eros. Peter Phillips, whose Broadway music connections include Jesus Christ Superstar and Bob Fosse's Dancin', plays the minimalist sounds beautifully at an onstage baby grand. And David Henry Hwang, also with Broadway credentials (he wrote M. Butterfly), authored her four-part solo performance. But it's her lighting designer, Chris Odo, who makes it all come together.
Ms. Fleming was at the Aronoff's Jarson-Kaplan Theater Friday and Saturday. I caught Friday's performance.
To watch Ms. Fleming's work you have to have a lot of patience and be willing to give up your Western-informed way of looking at dance. There's nothing kinetically-charged about anything she does. It's slow-motion micromovements. Her dancing proceeds by inches at a snail's pace.
With Mr. Odo's lighting capturing slivers of her nearly nude body, images are produced that hint at something recognizable. The combination of the repetitive music, languid movements and warm lighting have the effect of putting you in a trance.
“The Sphere” was her most mesmerizing piece. As she stood in darkness high on a platform, her body curved and melted into continually changing circles, bonelessly curling into spheres.
In “The Stairs” she seemed to hang in the air, suspended effortlessly. As she glided through the moves, it was impossible to even recognize a body — she became a mobile of many shapes.
With the limited movement vocabulary, the biggest problem was one of self-indulgence. About half way through I began to wonder if I could take any more. I began to anticipate which way her body would bend next and was frustrated it was taking her so long to get there.
But I left the theater glad to have seen her sensual abstractions and sculpted shapes. With the emphasis on the super-charged in so much of today's choreography, it was a relief to see someone take an unhurried approach.
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