Jennifer Muller/The Works, Program B

Jennifer Muller/The Works, Program B
Joyce Theater, New York, NY

September 29, 2005

Reviewed by Karen Hildebrand

Jennifer Muller celebrated her company’s 30th anniversary with an ambitious mix of new works and old that tested the limits of her modest troupe and the attention span of her audience.

Program B contrasted two premieres with works from 1995 and 1974. Sunshine & Shadows (premiere) is a quartet—two men, two women—in costumes of fluttering gray and white. When the men compete over one woman, you can see the tension, but you can’t feel it. You want sexual sparks to fly and crave the moment when the couple will melt deliciously together. It never comes. The piece ends with the four scattered to separate corners, warily (or is it regretfully?) watching their backs.

Fortunately, emotion is not required in Momentum, a premiere. Elbows and fists rule in the hip hop and jazz styles that let dancers Gen Hashimoto, Courtney D. Jones, and Rosie Lani Fiedelman shine.

Muller’s movement vocabulary is full of complex lifts and turns in attitude, and she asks for versatility from her dancers when she might do better to play to their strengths. Pascal Rekoert, for instance, is long-limbed and elegant when his ballet technique is in the spotlight, but he can’t quite get down with hip hop. Although Hashimoto has great jazz moves, his partnering is clumsy. The exception is Yumiko Yoshikawa, who embodies everything in Muller’s repertoire, leading with her head and winging the movement through her torso and arms.

The themes of The Spotted Owl (1995)—endangered species and consumerism—remain relevant, but Muller’s treatment is overly literal.Plus, the text is dated—the dancers refer to answering machines, though they’re probably not old enough to have ever used one, and “PC compatible computer” is a mouthful when audiences are fluent in BlackBerry and PDA. Peeling down to brown and russet underwear that blends in with the leaf-strewn stage, the dancers speak of the American Dream as they line up to receive a cloth (food? money?) from a man with a basket until there is none left to give.

In Speeds (1974), a procession of dancers walks, runs, swirls, and spirals, clad in blindingly white street clothes. It’s unfortunate that the physical changes in direction eventually become an admonishment, with the dancers taking turns running downstage to say, “Change!” No problem. By the end of this program, we’re more than ready.