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Pearson Widrig Dance Theater — Melt

At the Duke, West 42nd St., New York City
March 16 through 20, 2005
New York, New York

A Review

  • Across the footlights 18” blocks of ice glow in the white light of side-mounted lekos. The ceremony begins. The dancers enter and one by one stand on blocks of ice until they break.
  • Projected on the cyclorama archival footage of ice cutting and processing intimates what is to come.
  • Inspired by those visions, the dancers give us continuous visions of the flowing of ice.
  • The dancers are marvelously athletic, their contact-improvisation technique used with clarity and invention. The hard cyclorama becomes a contact partner. The dance flows as the ice has flowed.
  • Sara brings us intimations of spring. The ice flows some more. There is a ceremony of two dry ice pots, which flow their mist across the stage, and still the ice blocks contact ice blocks.
  • Sara brings us baby plants. The ice flows some more.
  • Sara brings us maturing vegetation. For a moment there is the wonderful vision of the faces behind the foliage. The ice flows some more.
  • We see the flight of water birds from the melted icy waters. The dancers stand on the blocks of ice still melting at the footlights till they break.
  • BLACKOUT.

By this time you have intimations of my reservations. There is no question about the marvelous competency of the dancers or the ability of Sara and Patrik to compose a continuity of contact that is intriguing to view. There are certain things I wished I had seen. I really needed a new vision when the ice finally broke. I thought I was going to get it when the dancers grouped in a sort of “pig pile,” but… more of the marvelous same. I thought maybe when the smoking pots appeared with truly compelling ceremony, just maybe, but… more of the marvelous same. Even the cyclorama shadows became a reiteration. (Changing patterns in the lekos could have helped here.) That marvelous vision of faces through the vegetative growth presaged change, but no…

Despite my reservations, Melt is a well-choreographed contact work that I am pleased to have seen. It was just too much of a really good thing.

— Ruth E. Grauert, March 21, 2005   



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