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3rd Law Dance/Theater
2009-05-02

Elliott And LaVita Do Eliot and Prufrock

3rd Law Dance/Theatre's "Till We Wake" opens with dancers in place in the dark, as videos begin mounting juxtapositions of the last twenty years in the United States and the World with happenings of the last one hundred and ten years. Those videos show the horrors of WWI and WWII, New York Times headlines, clips of politicians from Adolph Hitler to George W. Bush, clips of public celebrations, and of social dancing. Gradually Craig Bushman brings lights up that reveal dancers lying on the floor and two people sitting motionless on minimal platforms down stage right. The dancers rise and exit as the two people remain. Then Philip Charles Sneed, taking on aspects  of J. Alfred Prufrock, in sonorous clear voice begins to recite T.S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" to Katie Elliott, as his lover. That poem becomes what drives a profound work of beauty that speaks to all about who we are, where we have been, and how we just may be still the same as we were. One real concern about the work is that the inherent beauty Elliott, Jim LaVita, and Sneed have built into it just might upstage its profound message, to wit, that despite major changes in our world we as a people are much the same. That we seem to go through cycles of philosophical bent, but maybe develop no lasting change as a people, even as we call for, and preach for change.

Elliott and LaVita have honed the use of technologies such as sound editing and video wonderfully, and in ways that never demand eye choices. Interestingly Elliott even lays out a complex grid on the floor that defines most of how she uses the space. Props consist of only some six boxes of varying size, those boxes varying from chairs and tables to platforms on which dance happens. Every word in Sneed's recitations of the poem are clear and can be heard in every corner of the Boulder, Colorado Dairy Center's Performance Space. Every dance move and lift reads well, with the only drawback being that some, exquisite as they may be, are gone in a second. (Ah, the ephemeral nature of dance.) Given all of that it is not easy to point out highlights. However, along with Sneed's voice and recitation those highlights include Elliott's graceful and movement, often in silence, in which she accepts what he says; a delightful trio danced by Eliza Kuelthau, Tara Rynders, and Tiffany Halay to a contralto aria from Giuseppe Verdi's "I Vespri Siciliani;" a duet danced by Mason Lawrence Taylor and Jennifer Golonka, in which Golonka's movement speaks more from her head than most dancers can accomplish with their entire bodies; a duet based heavily in trust danced on boxes by Angie Simmons and Michael Richman: and Danielle Hendricks' stunning movement and presence throughout the work.

"Till We Wake" will be presented again by 3rd Law next weekend (May 8 and 9, 2009) in the Boulder Dairy Center's Performance Space.

Photo by Jim LaVita

Donald K. Atwood MFA, Ph.D. atwood@worlddancereviews.com

© Copyright Word Dance Reviews 2009

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