"El Trilogy," last night's sold out performance by the Trisha Brown Dance Company with the Dave Douglas Ensemble, opened with a familiar appeal to the audience. Dancer Kathleen Fisher performed an early addition to the scheduled program in honor of the victims of the tragic events of Sept. 11, 2001. In her careful and practiced movements against the backdrop of a moving opera score, she revealed what was to come throughout the rest of the evening, a glance into the human body's simple capacity, in conjunction with modern jazz and percussion, to display art in motion.
Trisha Brown, the first woman choreographer to receive the prestigious MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, joined with Dave Douglas, Down Beat's "Jazz Artist of the Year," to create "El Trilogy," an evening-length, choreographed blend of contemporary dance and jazz music.
The first piece wove itself out of a solo dancer, swimming through the dim lighting as a styled silhouette. Slowly and quickly the stage brightened and black body turned to pale green, then powder blue. Shifts of light enhanced the colors as the movements continued, swirling the eye while the soft instrumental caught the ear.
Experimentations in sights and sounds were obvious throughout the entire performance. Colors shifted from piece to piece, some glowing in bright stripes of the rainbow, others fading to the gray of the stage floor. Brown displayed unity as dancers often took the stage in rough stagers, or lines reminiscent of follow the leader. Yet, intense emotional solo acts also prevailed, convulsing in silent bodily language and feeling.
During one pause, a dancer bearing a stage crew ladder formed herself into a bending human tree against the stair-stepped metal, creating a stunning contrast between the rigidity and flexibility of two concrete objects in union.
Through most of the performance it was impossible to tell whether the dancers followed the shifting and improvisional jazz and percussion beats, or if the music accommodated the dancers' changing styles. During one section of choreography the reechoing of cymbals silenced stage movements before quickly fading to the background enough that the powerful slaps and squishes of bare feat against stage were audible in the balcony of the theater.
Brown's choreography shook traditional gender roles at times by supplying the viewer with the body as a simple, moveable form. In one set of movements dancers served as bendable human blocks, picked up and shaken out, bent to the side, then stood straight again. Human emotion and character appeared suddenly, however, in sudden shifts of costume and style.
The midpoint of the program consisted of groups of dancers participating in swing dance movements and a conglomeration of various other dance styles. Yet, in the midst of her carefully designed physical and sensuous beauty, Brown was still determined to break traditional dance rules of fashioned perfection.
Dancers sporadically interrupted lines and patterns by suddenly stumbling and slamming to the floor. In this way, Brown challenged the preconceived ideals of beauty through exact symmetry and instead manifested a beauty by displaying nature's amazing creation of form, and exemplifying what it is to be alive.
To see Brown and Douglas at work is to immerse oneself in the spirit of 21st-century creative and artistic works. Anyone would appreciate the skill with which dancers and musicians to turn themselves into modes of artistic expression. The Trisha Brown Dance Company with the Dave Douglas Ensemble will perform "El Trilogy" again at the Moore Theater this evening.
