Keigwin + Company + Love of Theater

Swift, glossy, sometimes feirce, Keigwin + Company whipped through a week at Jacob’s Pillow, leaving audiences elated by a mix of dance, music, costume, light and fog. All the stuff of theater. Larry Keigwin is the choreographer who moved 150 fashion models around the Lincoln Center fountain at Fashion Week last year. He’s worked with ballet stars and Rockettes, an opera company and cabarets; he is staging a revival of “Rent” off Broadway and his company performs at the Joyce, New York City’s theater for modern dance. His work is intense and accessible and, often, funny. If it’s entertaining, he must be saying, it’s good. “Runaway,” opens with a blast of fog across the stage, pierced by floor lights aimed at the audience. A woman, aided by three men, is preparing to go out: One of the fellows holds her mirror as she applies lipstick and mascara. Then she pins her hair flat before donning a huge puffy wig which one of the men sprays generously, and at length. Then darkness, throbbing music, “Thirteen” by Jonathan Melville Pratt, and a club scene materializes with women in wigs and short tight bright dresses, and men, deadpan and barefoot in black suits and pencil ties, strutting, angry looking, some of them, and maybe drugged. It’s a mosaic with shifting pieces: a fleeting and balletic pas de deux followed by a woman running, arms pumping, after a man and jumping on his back, and all the time the dancers pace the floor, soar and turn and pace to the electronic beat. In no time, many have stripped to their underwear, everyone walking fast, women getting caught and running, caught and running. The lights allow dancers to disappear into the back wall and emerge again, and the dancers finish, strutting like models and aloof, through the aisles of the Doris Duke theater. “Love Songs,” is six duets to songs performed by Roy Orbison, Aretha Franklin and Nina Simone. Some of the lovers are witty, some aggrieved, some joyous. These are not all happy loves but they are absorbing. Keigwin + Company opened this show with “Megalopolis.” In quaint futuristic costumes with aerodynamic epaulets, mostly black and showered with sparkles, dancers advanced like Martha Graham figures, in cohorts, jumping flat-footed across the stage. And, as elsewhere, snippets of ballet winked in and out of the high-precision action. Then sweepers cleared the stage of spangles before the next dance: “Bird Watching,” to Haydn’s Symphony No. 6. Men and women in black tutus, fanning their face with jeweled fingers, preening like birds, like models, like dancers, sometime parodying ballet moves. These are strong, charismatic and contained dancers. No showy hyper extentions, here. The women are stocky, the men more willowy, and they all move with speed and strength and beauty. Catch Keigwin + Company when you can. For information on programs at Jacob’s Pillowin Becket, MA, go to jacobspillow.org.This week, through July 3, Carte Blanche performs at the Ted Shawn Theatre and Jane Comfort and Company at the Doris Duke. For tickets, call 413-243-0745.