NAME

DANCE REVIEW

Dancing in circles with Kelley Donovan

By Thea Singer, Globe Correspondent, 09/28/97

eprinted from late editions of yesterday's Globe.

CAMBRIDGE - Choreographer Kelley Donovan is in love with the circle:

with the fact that it is a continuum that has no beginning or end, that it has a

strong, solid center, that it conjures up lushness and depth. The best of the

seven dances she presented Friday night - ''Strange Attractor,'' ''Unfolding,''

and ''Plunge'' - were full of circles: ripples and swirls and sweeps. Its

absence was notable in the four that didn't fare so well - ''Catching Up,''

''Soft,'' ''Squirm,'' and ''Silence.''

''Strange Attractor,'' a solo set to original music by composer Michael Oster,

is a snake charmer of a dance. Motored by a pair of spiraling wrists, it is a

compendium of spirals and curves that are cut, now and then, by abrupt

downward arm slices or hands slipping quietly across a belly. There's

something tremendously organic about its development: The energy that

begins in the dancer's extremities comes full circle, powering her entire self.

''Catching Up,'' performed in silence, is more a bag of tricks than a fully

realized dance. The three dancers bop bellies, slap their butts while they're

sitting to propel themselves across the floor, and bounce one another like

rubber balls. ''Look at me, I'm funny,'' they seem to be saying. Its

wisecracking is too forced, its humor too self-conscious to carry.

''Soft,'' also to an original score by Oster, begins intriguingly: A single

dancer, clad in kimono-type pajamas, lies on a sea of multicolored pillows.

The rectangle of cushy greens and blues and oranges is striking. Slowly,

rhythmically, she curves her head forward, juts her arms up from the elbows,

turns gently, crookedly, from side to side. But alas, the center does not hold:

in short order the dancer rises and pushes apart the pillows, taking the piece

from the sensual and abstract to the pedantically literal - she's all healed and

can get out of bed now.

Though it begins a bit melodramatically, with poses snapped shut by

blackouts, ''Unfolding'' grows into a sensuous dance for four. There's

something overwhelmingly gentle, even loving about it. Couples curve inside

each other, support each other back-to-back as they melt into a sit, and

trace concentric circles in the air. Technique is not the point here, sensibility

is. Unfortunately, the dance, set to a minimalist score by Igor Tkachenko,

stops in midstream. Donovan would do well to make its ending as complete

as the rest of it.

''Plunge'' is a hoot. Seven dancers with tiny plungers career onstage,

punctuating Strauss's ''Blue Danube Waltz'' with the sound of seven plungers

schlupping - off the floor, off a thigh, off a partner's hip. The prop is now a

trumpet, now a telephone, now a sword. The invention and Donovan's

disregard for ''meaning'' are thoroughly refreshing.

''Squirm,'' to a rain-and-thunder soundscape by Peter Roberts, is the

weakest piece on the program. It seems more a composition exercise - in

how many different positions can I do a figure eight with my arms? - than a

full-fledged dance.

The most ambitious work of the evening was ''Silence,'' a Graham-influenced

dance for eight to music by Oster. The dance has a center of iron: again and

again, a single woman plays against the group, bolting from a deep

contraction in a sitting position to a curve with splayed, bent legs. But the

piece as a whole lacked shape, hitting the eye with singular points of interest

rather than a satisfying landscape.

This story ran on page C08 of the Boston Globe on 09/28/97.