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Dunn company builds logic from chaos Douglas Dunn & Dancers performed a single modern dance concert Saturday night at UCLA, providing an unusual dance experience decidedly unsuited to the casual observer. Dunn’s choreography, which was presented in Schoenberg Hall, made variable use of the stage environment, from removed legs and revealed backstage walls to predictable black box slide projections on the scrim. Each work presented demanded active audience viewing, for no “story” was ever evident. Instead, Dunn forced the viewers to combine disconnected movement phrases for themselves, fashioning their own logic our of the chaos. Dunn’s Lazy Madge was performed with curtain raised on backstage walls and visible light poles. Billed as an ongoing choreographic project constantly evolving to fit each individual space for any performance, this piece seemed an exemplar of Dunn’s choreographic method. Five dancers manipulated a set body of material, seldom dancing in unison or performing steps in the same order. Emotive projection by the performers was almost nil, allowing the movement to stand uninflected by personality. Dunn’s own habit of staring floorward as he dances seems totally natural in this context, his frown of concentration undistracting. The occasional moments of unison movement struck with special force, for the energy of five distinct paths united into a surge of power. Danced without accompaniment, this piece started to attune audience perception, making the shaking of a foot as visually important as a grand jeté. Rille and Coquina evolved similarly, adding stage props to vary the setting, perhaps to vary the point of view. Rille exhibited five dancers moving within the confines of a red u-shaped structure suspended from the ceiling and stretched the width and depth of the stage. This structure seemed to symbolize a barre from the ballet studio, and the movement style seemed to metamorphose from the ballet vein to the greater risk taking of the modern dance. The same manipulation of a set body of material seemed to occur, with a series of costume changes by the dancers providing a thread of both variance and unity. Coquina proved special in its imaginative use of the vocal score “Ideas for The Church,” from Private Parts, spoken by Robert Ashley. The score was repeated three times, sounding part religious-tract, part new physics, while the dancers performed their choreographic score with three sets of costume modification. Slides projected from the black box at the footlights provided between-set images which also changed in focus. By providing score and slides, however unrelated to the choreography, Dunn echoed his own work Merce Cunningham while stimulating the audience to greater mental-physical connections. Dunn in not to be taken lightly – only with great audience innervation can the beauty, pulse and yes, excitement of his choreography be revealed.
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