Zero Visibility Corp

Zero Visibility Corp
P.S. 122, New York, NY

November 30 and December 1, 2005

Reviewed by Wendy Perron

This duet, called . . . it’s only a rehearsal, was the sexiest dance concert in recent memory. A man and a woman moved separately with verve and sensuality; together they were wrapped in the kind of heat that suddenly descends and suddenly lifts. She is a magnetic, velvety mover, extending limbs that end in tendrils of yawns or escapes. He spikes his moves with break-dance spins and moonwalks. When they became aware of each other, he was so drawn to her that he seemed to inhale her. As his advances turned violent—he intercepted or gagged her—she became ambivalent, doubting. The spontaneity between them brought pleasure, but also danger.

She is Line Tørmoen and he is Dimitri Jourde. Ina Christel Johannessen choreographed this dance-theater piece in Norway and brought it to the “Norway in New York” festival at P.S.122. There was a kind of hidden plot, based on Ovid’s Metamorphosis: By chance Acteon sees Artemis, the goddess of the hunt, bathing nude. She punishes him by turning him into a stag, and his own dogs attack him and tear him to pieces. But in . . . it’s only a rehearsal, this narrative framework sometimes got reversed; for instance it was she who brazenly flashed him her nude torso.

The highpoint was a kiss in which they seemed glued together, a kiss that lasted through somersaults and intertwining like Chagall’s couples in the sky, a kiss that she interrupted by saying things like “There is so much beauty if you can see it.” Afterward, she became a bit unhinged, staring out into space. Shades of Giselle’s mad scene. Later she smiled inscrutably while he did his craziest stuff—jouncing up and down, knees knocking, arms whirring.

The comedic highpoint was the final scene when Jourde related the “plot” in French. He acted out at least two different parts, manically darting from one to the other. As he tore away at his own chest, clump of flesh by clump of flesh, suddenly we understood French—and maybe Norwegian too. It was a deliciously dark comedy. See www.ps122.org.