Restless minds produce a restless work in “Rituals of Abundance for Lean Times #14: Curious Reinventions,” as Margi Cole and the Dance COLEctive join the Peter Carpenter Performance Project in Carpenter’s 14th dance-theater investigation of politics, society and psychology.
This wonderfully inventive, occasionally funny ambulatory work for 10, through Saturday, ranges all over the city’s Storefront Theater. The audience starts on the catwalk, looking down at the stage, and ends up in the theater’s tiered seats. In between, we’re divided into five groups and herded into various nooks and crannies (hallways, stairwells) displaying often-intimate scenes.
Those visits feel disjointed, isolated, a little aimless. Since each group starts and ends in different spots, no dramatic arc is possible. The themes become clear—sort of—only in the second half, when everyone reunites in the theater.
Carpenter’s intriguing texts, which he and the others deliver (and to which they contributed), reveal that his subject is imitation. A useful device in war, it can take the form of chameleonic camouflage: Mimicking another’s gestures and facial expressions, suggesting solidarity, is an excellent survival tool, as all teenagers know. But Carpenter also discloses, in his own solo, how he purposely antagonized his sister by repeating everything she said. Imitation isn’t a simple act.
Various byways and detours, many of them self-reflexive, are explored: a history of the artists’ brainstorming as they created the piece, a look at the workings of imitation in the choreographer-dancer relationship (the dancers revolt), a deconstruction of the connections—or lack thereof—between gesture, dance and meaning. Then there’s the role played by imitation in creating, or violating, gender identity.
The loose semi-chaos of the dancers’ ensemble sections suggests a playing field, a sporting event. Virtuosic dancing is not the point, but all the performers have a hypnotic charm and stage presence, whether up close in a stairwell, just sitting onstage, or advancing on us, en masse, in our seats.
Clearly separate from their younger counterparts, Cole and Carpenter are often still, almost regal, sphinx-like presences, especially emblematic toward the end. There’s the barest suggestion that imitation in the form of mockery can be a tool in undermining authority. But, unfortunately, that’s as far as political commentary goes in “Curious Reinventions.”
These two mature, experienced choreographers know all the tricks of the trade—and sometimes the sense that they’ve seen it all undermines the piece. Potential tactics and subjects surface only to be treated with irony and dismissed. In “Curious Reinventions,” skepticism is the enemy of unity and passion. We’re left with the futility of words, thoughts, gestures, actions.
Peter Carpenter Performance Project/The Dance COLEctive, ‘Rituals of Abundance for Lean Times #14: Curious Reinventions’
3 stars
Molzahn is a freelance critic.
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When: 7 and 9 p.m. Saturday
Where: Storefront Theater, 66 E. Randolph
Running time: 1 hr.
Tickets: $15 at 773-604-8452 or dancecolective.com