===== ADF performances churn emotions in audience =====


By SUSAN BROILI : The Herald-Sun\\

Jun 26, 2008\\

DURHAM -- The American Dance Festival program presented Tuesday and Wednesday at Duke University's Reynolds Industries Theater began with the sublime, continued with some astounding footwork and ended with what felt like a descent into Hades.

Khadija Marcia Radin left this viewer wanting more of her mesmerizing version of an ancient form of turning that dates back to the 13th century Sufi mystic poet Rumi. As she circles in her dance, "Rapture," she brings beautiful hand articulations and a variety of footwork to this spiritual dance tradition. Hands to her ears, she listens to a higher calling expressed in the words of Rumi recited live by Mahbud John Burton: "One turning and burning diamond. One, one, one, one."

Cacophonous clunks precede stage lights and raised curtain for Turkish choreographer Aydin Teker's 2005 "aKabi." When the curtain rises, the source of the thunderous noise is revealed: black platform, clog-like shoes that appear to be about two-feet high. Four dancers use the shoes to prop themselves up in various ways, then draw the shoes together behind them, sit on the broad sides of the shoes and bounce. This causes the toes of the shoes to flip up and resemble a seal's tail -- just one of the ingenious ways Teker builds a dance around this unique foot apparel.

Or are the shoes in control? When dancers thrash around on stage, they seem to be at the shoes' mercy. At other times, as when they stand upright, and lean dangerously off-center, they appear as alien beings adept at defying gravity. When they roll, feet held in a V shape, they look like grasshoppers. In extremely-wide squats, balanced on the shoes, dancers could be making an advertisement for knee surgery. This dance has to be very hard on the legs and knees, but the dancers make it look easy. When it's time for bows, only the shoes appear at first. Then, dancers follow.

A feeling of exhaustion set in after Compagnie Maguy Marin's performance of French choreographer Maguy Marin's 2004 "Umwelt." While some dances energize, this one left this viewer beaten down by the angry, repetitive, seemingly never-ending bleak look at existence. In it, dancers continuously emerge, disappear, and move through a construction of metal mirrors as they go through everyday movements and violent gestures. They read newspapers, scrub floors, don various hats and clothes and take clothes off. They shake fingers in anger and shake fake babies held above their heads. They tote large sacks and plastic sides of beef. They kiss. In some of the most irritating moves, they activate camera flashes and point high-powered flashlights at the audience. This adds blinding light to the arsenal of repetition that assaults viewers.

A constant stiff wind that blows clothes and hair -- and an unpleasantly loud doomsday score that includes helicopter sounds and screams -- add to the feeling of being trapped in a hellish world, a condition that applies to the world onstage and also for some audience members. A number of people freed themselves by walking out.

Sure, Marin's making a point. There's all this consumerism, violence and disinterested people involved in mundane and often meaningless activities that do nothing to change the world's problems people have created. There's war -- indicated by gun-wielding dancers in Army helmets -- just one manifestation of humanity's violent streak. Dancers munch on apples, bones and what look like carrots and toss leftovers on the stage floor that also becomes littered with discarded clothes and what resembles pieces of bricks they throw by the bucketfuls. The stage becomes a nasty mess -- emblematic, no doubt, of many aspects of today's world. "We get it, we get it," one audience member remarked to another upon leaving the theater after enduring this dance. And they got it long before this 55-minute dance ended.