In Extremis: Spectrum Dance Theater @ The Moore

First of all, despite what you read in the Times and the P-I about Donald Byrd's Never-Mind (which came and went over the weekend), it's not all that, as Brendan Kiley says over on the Slog. We've become fans of Byrd's "neo-expressionist" style, but Never-Mind (at this point) is short on style and substance. It came off like "Frank Miller's Never-Mind": an ugly cartoon of drug abuse, of dysfunction, of iconic fame.

Not that there isn't plenty of ugliness in the music of Kurt Cobain, but Byrd doesn't truly make much room for the Cobain that even non-grunge-lovers admit was that remarkable a musical artist. (It's one thing to call songs "coping music," it's another to pointedly ignore the transcendent leaps they make.) As portrayed by David Alewine, Cobain is a shambling mess, scratching at his arm, recoiling from Courtney's anger, romancing and abandoning fans of both sexes, briefly pulling himself together -- but burning out the whole way.

Alewine perfectly caught the achy-jointed walk of the junkie, and the raw-hamburger strung-out sensitivity. We also liked the doubling of Cobain's getting a fix from Love (she stabs his arm with her index finger), making visible how tied he was both to heroin and his relationship needs. We would have liked to have seen more of that kind of expressionism, rather than the literal we did see. We were here for all of that. We would have liked to have seen more dance, less tabloid sheet. (Or better tabloid sheet. Whichever.)

Byrd and his Spectrum troupe are more than capable of finding dance in unlikely places. Also on the bill was Short Dances/Little Stories, with a hip-hop and rap score by New Orleans anger-mismanagement artist Mystikal (currently serving a 6-year prison sentence). Except for a butt-cheek danceline and Solid Gold finish, it's nasty, brutish, and moments of tenderness are short. It literally hurts to watch, but the troupe are so committed you can't tear your eyes away from the collisions, attacks, wrestling sex bouts. Brash, changeable, and sexy, Ty Alexander Cheng gave us the chance to use the word "scorching" in this post.

I've Got the Wilis is Act II of Life Situations: Daydreams on Giselle (Donald Byrd's reworking of the ballet Giselle, we're told). It's exactly the kind of piece that Byrd's re-imaginings work so well with. On the one hand, if you've ever confronted a recent ex and their friends, you'll know what's happening here. On the other, the four women wear red tops streaked with lines and branchings and to our eyes, they looked like flayed torsos with white tutus -- a group of punky Furies that descend upon Peter Degrasse like a sex train but then sting like scorpions. They're a visual extension of that itchy, whipped skin feeling that both arouses and tortures, making explicit its home in the body.

Photo highlight from Short Stories by Gabriel Bienczycki.