Taking Us to New Places

It opens in blue, a haunting, timeless, ethereal blue, the kind of bluethat reminds you of dreams. Center Stage amid all this blue light stand three dancers with their backs to the audience. They are of similar height, comparable build and dressed in matching costumes of baggy white pants and simple white tops. The music begins, a crackly, haunting ditty spoken (sung?) repeatedly:“Jesus’ blood never failed me. Yes, never failed me. Yes, Jesus’ blood neverfailed me. This one thing I know, for he loved me so.” The dancers move in rhythms and motions reminiscent of the tide coming in and going out. Then they turn and a flash of black — a small apron, a square of loincloth — jars the trance-like mood and the stainless impression. This hard edge draws the attention in just the same way the dancers’ precise movements emphasize their repetition. It is odd. It is awkward. It is also poetic.The 2011 season of Bard SummerScape has opened. The Tero Saarinen Company, the celebrated modern dance company from Finland that has won numerous international awards since its founding in 1996, gave four performances at Bard over the July 7-10 weekend, the only stop in the United States on its world tour. The company presented a triple bill of some of its most notable dances: “Westward, Ho!” their debut signature from 1996; “Wavelengths” (2000), a reworking of Ravel’s “Bolero”; “HUNT” (2002), a stunning solo conceived and danced by the troupe’s founder, Tero Saarinen, to Stravinsky’s“The Rite of Spring.” And an unexpected bonus: the award-winning lighting by Mikki Kunttu which really is every bit as spectacular as Saarinen’s choreography. “Westward, Ho!”is an odd little piece for three dancers. Built aroundrepetition and simple, stark movements typical of much modern dance of a certain genre, “Westward, Ho!” slowly develops a theme about individuality versusgroup sensibility or even dogma. The playbill describes the dance as anexploration of “friendship and betrayal – a stoic struggle for survival.”It is odd musically as well as visually for it is awkward even as it lullsyou or disturbs you. Saku Koistinen, Pekka Louhio and Heikki Vienola dance“Westward, Ho!” with an ease that belies the difficulty of Saarinen’schoreography. The prone inching across the floor, the expansive armmovements done in sync are easy examples to recall of demanding choreography that only looks easy. “Wavelengths,” however, is lyrical where “Westward, Ho!” is self-conscious. It is exciting in that it is a traditional pas de deux with a contemporary perspective on love and the struggle to maintain a sense of self. Thedancing by Henrikki Heikkilå and Sini Lånsivuori is beautiful and powerful. The use of shadows to intensify and distort is equally effective. Thelighting moves from cool, neutral white to a black background to a richorange, an interesting palette for the drawing close and pushing away ofattraction. Costumes by Erika Turenen are simple, Continued from page 10loose, and spare in bland colors. The backless cut of Turenen’s top and the merciless spotlight on the dancer’s sinewy back underscore her strength and seeming delicacy. It is sensual and oddly modern. The best piece out of an evening of strong, stunning dance, however, wasSaarinen’s solo performance in “HUNT.” While Saarinen typically uses light and shadow the way others use set and costume, this is pushed to extremes in “HUNT” as Saarinen uses his own body as a canvas for an internal light show as well as strobe lights to create a host of images and effects that have everything to do with lift and loft as much as a frenzied beating of wings,or a gasping breath for life. The 45-minute solo is visually astonishing and conceptually beautiful. It gathers radically different elements and weaves them together to present this final work of physicality and vision. In many ways, Tero Saarinen at SummerScape was “classic Bard,” an evening of the excellent as well as the esoteric. If the gift of dance is in the way, its sheer physicality can take audiences to unexpected places. The TeroSaarinen Company delivered twofold: first, in the way it stretches expectations of dance; and finally, in the stunning way it takes its audience to new places.