Reviews
CrossCurrents Troupe Looks Back At a Decade
Ten years out CrossCurrents Dance Company, the Bethesda-based troupe founded and sustained by artistic partners Debra Kanter and Helen Hayes, demonstrated that its longevity is well earned. The choreography, by directors Kanter and Hayes and guest artists, remains mostly well crafted, dramatically cogent and, if not earth-shatteringly original, at least not third-rate. The latest batch of dancers is technically adept and intelligent, if not always subtle. And the company looks terrific on a modestly sized proscenium stage.
Saturday’s 10th-anniversary program at Kreeger Auditorium featured works from the company’s inaugural year as well as a premiere. Among the seven pieces, standouts included a quirky study of three distinctively dreamy women, two duets reflecting both sides of relationships unraveling, and a finely rehearsed work for teen dancers of the District’s Joy of Motion Youth Dance Ensemble.
But first, those women in Cathy Paine’s Edward Gorey-esque “White Dream Recurring” finessed wickedly funny undertones. Katharine Mardirosian’s ghostly bride wafted across the stage to the tinkling of the Pachelbel Canon, sickly sweet yet sincere. Michelle Williams relished her inner diva in a series of aborted attempts to hit sopranic high notes. Finally, Kanter was drawn to a pair of satin pointe shoes while strains of Saint-Saens’s “Dying Swan” underscored her pursuit of the unattainable — grace. The work’s epilogue returned the trio as ordinary modern dancers, their dreams dispersed.
“Missive From Spillville,” a recent duet by Alvin Mayes for Hayes and Donnie Walker, gently mined the inner workings of a poignantly fading relationship. Kanter revealed another side to the Hayes-Walker partnership in “Grey Zone,” featuring the choreographer’s trademark tilts and slashes set in high relief against Chris Isaak’s driving score. In “Whirlpools,” seven teen dancers circled in eddies, skimming and relishing the ebb and flow of Hayes’s lyric intent. Less successful was the lost intimacy in Kanter’s mournful trio “Precipice” and her cloying mother-daughter quartet, “Reunion.” Emily Crews’s flippant “Swing Set,” also with Walker, elicited scant laughs.
© 2006 The Washington Post