Dance Review
By Karen Campbell
At first blush, one wouldn't notice that dancer/choreographer Kelley Donovan still slightly favors her left foot from a 2-year-old undiagnosed injury. In the new "Squirm," premiered last night at Green Street Studios, Donovan moved confidently as the patter of rain set up a hypnotic wash of sound. rolls and curls, weighted and sensuous, sent the dancer gently through the space.
But one repeted turn spiraling outward, leaving the left leg skewed awkwardly behind, alluded to the injury that informed almost the entire evening's body of work. Entitled "Metamorphosis," the concert represented Donovan's exploration of transformation - "loss, acceptance and new beginnings."
However, most of the workds of last night's concert had a rather neutral, almost abstract, feel, featuring concepts and underlying meanings far less than Donovan's appealing movement aesthetic itself - lush, weighted phrases, both clean of line and liquid in flow, muscular, yet lyrical.
In fact, the weakness in Donovan's work comes in the lack of transformation. Too many works, all short, seemed to end abruptly ina fade of light and sound as ideas just fizzled out rather than coming to a sense of closure, or charting a sense of expansion and development.
Of the new works, the large group pieces fared best. Donovan had 17 young, mostly student volunteers from a variety of backgrounds whose diversity and collaborative spirit undoubtedly gave Donovan a wider range.
"Silence" was visually stunning, with the eight women inshort dark velvet dresses, their bare limbs bathed in a golden glow. Donovan constructed engaging, intriguing patterns and floorwork, from slow, unctuous rolls, arms unfurling sensuously, to vigorous stretches and falls. Often the dancer formed lines, both side to side and front to back, with motions rippling like wind through wheat.
"Unfolding" played of the flow and exchange of weight in contact improv, suggesting shifting lines of support. In the clever, humorous "Plunge," suction was the operative word. Seven dancers rhythmically stuck plungers with shortened handles onto various body parts, leading and pulling this way and that. They struggled as plungers became weapons, instruments or revenge, mock trumpets and telephones, but in the end one dancer emerged victorious.
Kelley Donovan in "Strange Attractor," Photo by Dan Murphy
A Review of "Metamorphosis" in September 1997