Spectrum Dance's Studio Series: Three by O'Neal, Scofield, Byrd

For this season's first Studio Series, "Seattle MOVES!", Spectrum's Donald Byrd invited local choreographers Amy O'Neal and Zoe Scofield to join in creating new works, and the eye-catching results are on view at 7:30 p.m. tonight and tomorrow at Bellevue's Meydenbauer Center, and at Spectrum's Madrona studio this Saturday (7:30) and Sunday (5:30).

O'Neal's back it up leads off the program, assembling the dancers in street/rehearsal clothes, very "Fame! I'm gonna live forever," with music by MF Doom, X Clan, Riuchi Sakamoto, Pete Rock & CLSmooth, and Cut Chemist (featuring Edan & Mr. Lif). Costumes for all the pieces are by Jessica Markiewicz, and they add a great deal to each. They warm up, step into dance floor moves, pop and lock, and in general, front like an MTV hip hop special. But there's a current of contact improv that flows through the piece--O'Neal said later she was thinking of Peter Pan and his shadow--where the dancers grab at each other's ankles and are pulled along or pull themselves. We're not sure why, but it pleased us, this disruptive play during what felt like a set of polished pros, strutting moves.

Second up was Byrd's Klavierstucke, to Brahms's work of the same name, Op. 76--"lullabies of sadness," Byrd claims Brahms said about the music--and it showcases a somber dark-night-of-the-soul side of Byrd, albeit with its hyperkinetic moments. The dancers are all in black, the company sitting in wooden chairs at the side of the stage and watching as duets and ensembles take up different movements. One of the most memorable parts is a male dancer, seated on the floor, watching as a female dancer either writhes in a bad dream or in pain, unable to do more than hold her, at the end. While Byrd keeps the center of action low to the floor, near the end he raises it up, with a dancer walking across a moving bridge of other dancers. Throughout, the imagery and technique is striking and haunting.

Zoe Scofield's Old girl concluded our evening (a dancer was injured, and Byrd's Sentimental Cannibalism wasn't shown); she was working with composer Holcombe Waller. We'd love to see the piece again--Scofield is never short of ideas. Her embrace of and resistance to classical ballet technique gives her works an inherent conflict: it's as if you're watching a dance troupe composed of Calibans--a horde of rough demons taught to behave, who may be about to turn on you. The focus shifts between vertical space and the floor (where one dancer lies on their backs, with another on all fours above them, and they move across the stage, evoking either or a couple making love or a mammal clung to by its young). All the dancers wear light blue tops, long-sleeved with hands sewn on, and dark vests/corsets. We've seen that corset-y look a lot in Scofield's work, and we asked her about it; she seemed a little surprised, but said, now that she thought about it, there was a sense of constraint she was after.

Top: Spectrum Dance company in Amy O'Neal's back it up; middle: Kylie Lewallen in Donald Byrd's Klavierstucke. Photos by Gabriel Bienczycki.