Ten Tiny Dances @ CHAC

1) I Love You (Ch. Megan Murphy): Maggie Brown comes out in white high heels. There's a small table on the small stage. She does a little monologue of a tango, steps out of the shoes, keeps dancing. The movement focus is on the restraint in her legs and feet (those are some expressive toes, too), while her arms and hands just hang outspread, rag-dollish. She takes her shoes and dances them on the little table. So far, we're in, but then she opens a drawer and pulls out a pair of pens, plays with them like dolls. One approaches an imaginary mic and she whispers "I love you." Then she stands up and says, "I love you" into a real microphone. We cock our heads. Huh.

2) Margin of Error (Ch. Alex Martin): Alex comes out with a red carpet for the 4' stage. She does what we think of as a rocking-horse kick, a leg out front, a leg out back, and trades off with another move we dub "jello hips." Watch them wiggle! She talks to the audience about a "she," her likes and dislikes: "She's the reason I drink so much French Roast." She semaphores a bit with her arms. "She likes turns." A series of turns. "She doesn't like this." Sings this. Okay, we think. It's domestic bliss, low-key.

3) Transpose 4x4 (Ch. Mary Sheldon Scott): Jim Kent and Jess Klein were our night's duo. He's up first, in gray cut-offs and a white t-shirt. The moves lie mostly along a vertical axis, which emphasizes arms and leg extensions into horizontal space. He subsides to the floor, then Jess joins him for a duet -- they mirror each other, cover each other's body. She support him with a lift. It strikes us as the kind of relationship where gifted partners know each other's moves, don't get in the way -- but maybe should.

4) Wouldn't cha love to know... (Ch. Drew Elliott): This is a teasing meditation on privacy, with Elliott wearing an iPod and the audience unable to tell what he's dancing to. He sings fragments of songs, skips ahead, editorializes. (Is he talking to us? Courtney thinks he shouldn't be, it plays against the privacy theme.) Modern dance moves collide with club booty-shaking. He says people say it takes time to get to know, appreciate, someone. He thinks it's more like searching for the "right" song: when you hear it, you know. Points for playing with the audience, but we don't need to see how people "dance at home." We have a mirror.

5) It feels good to be loved (Ch. Oscar Gutierrez, Giavanna Enriquez): These two put relationship in a 4-foot-square box and turn the heat on high. They highlight the tension of attraction and repulsion, and also the dizzy uplift, with lifts and spins. The language is a bit tango, a bit ballroom (she's in a gray silk dress), and completely unafraid of "falling off the box." The action is frenetic, then caught and held in a pose. They sink to the floor, kiss, and suddenly it's post-coital, you can see in the way they pull away from each other. They rise, pull together, pull away, pull together. Everyone's sweating. Wade Madsen, sitting across from us, is w00ting unashamedly.

6) Eddie's Visit (Ch. Orla McGovern): A change in tone. An older Irish woman in a "fancy" red ensemble, her skirt on wrong, displaying turquoise underwear when she bends over. She pulls an inflatable man from a just-delivered box, blows him up. She's talking to him...or someone else? They "dance" about, old people dance, she's telling him all the news. We're laughing, but then she starts a slow-motion disco break, and it's great. Then it's a tango, but he's deflating, then "we've only just begun" comes on. Up to now, the laughter hasn't stopped. Then, a single comment, and Courtney's over there wiping her eyes. How did that happen?

7) Love Bird Shout Out (Ch. Heather Budd, Jody Kuehner): Sawyer Gillespie enters, dropping plastic baggies and bits of foil, walks across the stage. The sound is waves, wind, gulls. Heather and Jody enter in fabulous bird costumes, tail-feathered, heads jerking, collecting baggies and foil with jabs of hands, stuffing the loot into shirt tops and their padded pigeon-butts. They groom each other, call and chirp "I love yous," tear into the baggies for Gummi worms. Note to self: well-observed bird behavior = hilarious.

8) San Francisco Story (Ch. Laura Curry, Lori Dillon): We've known Laura for a while now, and she's trouble with a capital T. Here, she and Lori enter, talking to each other, making notes about audience members. (Wade Madsen is hiding behind his program.) They select James, in the back row, to come up on stage (with his chair), then sit in his lap, and whisper animatedly in both his ears. Their movements are all about encroaching on his personal space, but how much? Is that a lap dance? Laura's fingers are in a V, the act of smoking abstracted. The whispers continue. Back on James's lap, Laura writes something down, entwined with James, Lori pets him. His farewell gift: a box of chocolates.

9) Dogs of Love (Ch. Crispin Spaeth): This duet comes with a throbbing bass line from Pere Ubu. Courtney calls it the "business casual" dance -- though Chay Norton is wearing a tux shirt, and Kathy Lawson's blouse is on the tight, sheer side. It's entanglement, union, collaboration: the moves suggest interpenetration of space. (Did we just type that in public?) Kathy lifts Chay for a turn, they're vehicles for each other, to rise or fall, support each other's intentions (or here, physical extensions). They're a little unsteady on the small stage. Courtney wants more out of it; we thump our chest, pant, hoot something about Lawson. It's a balanced appraisal.

10) Ropes Course (Ch. Juliet Waller Pruzan): Pruzan turns the small stage into a raft, with a story about two office workers on their company's leadership course. As Pruzan and Hando introduce themselves and explain why they're there, their movements are all elaborations of stereotypical greeting behaviors, handshakes, slaps. They're nervous, and it shows with repetition. As time goes on, night falls, they're slower, stretchier; morning brings exercise-type movements, high steps, they're getting desperate. Hando hops over the side (and splashes, thanks to lo-fi special effects). Later he's repeating, "It's not poop it's chocolate," and wiping something on himself. After 63 days at sea, two bottles drift up. They contain a final bit of laughter.