One of the many things I like about Douglas Dunn’s dancing is that it’s not always about showing a finished accomplishment; what he shows you is the process by which such accomplishments are arrived at. When he stands on one leg, he lets you see those things that make standing on one leg rather difficult. A lot of his dancing strikes me as a sober, thorough testing of force, speed, and equilibrium. For instance, at the beginning of his “ongoing choreographic project,” nicknamed Lazy Madge, he does a lot with shifting his weight from his feet to his hands and back.

But maybe that’s not always the beginning. Part of the fun of Lazy Madge is that Dunn has apparently devised solo movement and short duets and trios for himself and various combinations of eight people, and can put these together in any overlapping sequences he pleases. (Hence the informal gestures that mean, “Hey, Doug, you’re supposed to be over on that side of the room because our thing is next.”) So here are the dancers, all smart and lively, wearing their best dance togs (some, their favorite good-luck rags), and it’s wonderful to see how Dunn investigates and enhances their own dancing predilections. Jennifer Mascall, tall and strong, warmly alert, gets some of the most reckless steps. In a duet with Dunn she waits, profiled in a one-foot-front-one-foot-back, bent-kneed stance, then simply picks herself up and launches herself through the air in that position – thunking the floor on landing – until she’s close enough to him to toss him one leg to catch. Dana Roth, tall and soft, has high-reaching legs, is at home on tiptoe. A wading-bird dancer. And she solos simultaneously with Cristina Grasso-Caprioli, who has a tiny, trim body and is very good at centering herself into precise balances and giving out with balletic hot-licks. Ellen Webb, on the other hand, isn’t a fancy dancer; she looks sturdy, imaginative, good-tempered. So for her, not so much leg-tossing, but small, precise changes of focus and arm gestures, some fast stumbly crossovers with Dunn.

There’s a terrific duet for Ruth Alpert and Michael Bloom. Both are small – she calm and plain-dancing; he bold with his legs, superb with his timing, sometimes rather stiff and cross-looking above the waist. Their duet is friendly and good-sporty and evenly balanced. Later in the game, Diane Frank, taut and springy, covers a lot of space in another sensitively fitted solo. What else? A duet for Dunn and Bloom, full of lifts and drastic falls and moves that double back on themselves or stagger onto the leg you would have sworn wasn’t available for standing on. A trio for Roth, Webb, and Daniel Press (he and Dunn make you aware of his care with footwork) which gives off flashes of a mother guiding two friendly children. Too much unusual and beautiful dancing to catalog here.

Most of the dancers – Webb and Mascall in particular – have caught something of Dunn’s speculative and gravely witty style. Without any overt chumminess, they all look like people collaborating on an immensely invigorating project. And on the street every day since: “Did you see Doug Dunn?” “Yes, did you?” “Yes. Wow.” “Really!"