A Melange of Motion From Bowen McCauley

By Pamela Squires

Call it ballet. Call it modern dance. Call it balletic modern dance. Who cares? Lucy Bowen McCauley is simply a naturally skilled choreographer. Bowen McCauley Dance proved this again Wednesday at the Kennedy Center's Terrace Theatre, with a program of three repertory works and one premiere.

The premiere was "Saffron Dreams," a sexy Middle Eastern tango to music by '80s alternative rock band Camper Van Beethoven and Indian Bollywood composer Rahul Dev Burman. It paired veteran BMD dancer Ingrid Zimmer with Austin St. John, who has returned to the company after being away for a couple of years. Zimmer's opening solo had her pirouetting with bent knees while gyrating her hips like a belly dancer, a feat akin to rubbing your belly while patting your head. In the languid tango that followed, St. John and Zimmer dragged and dipped each other and she hung on his chest with abandon until he abandoned her for a macho solo. The work encapsulates Bowen McCauley's unencumbered attitude toward choreography, which she describes as this: "I don't do stories. I've got the Mark Morris approach. I make it up. You watch it."

Also on the program were three solid company standards that have only improved: last year's "Hold Sway," to a baroque violin sonata by Giovanni Antonio Pandoffi Mealli; "It's About Time" (1998), to Ottorino Respighi's G Major Suite for Orchestra and Organ; and this year's angular "Musica Ricercata," to music by modern composer Gyorgy Ligeti.

The five-year-old company and its corps of 11 ballet-trained "pickup" dancers really is a venue for Bowen McCauley's choreography. She now has at least 20 works under her belt. Bowen McCauley has been touted as the Jerry Seinfeld of dance, for making audiences laugh. Yet it's her clear structures and phrasing that leave the audience satisfied. Who cares if it's ballet or modern dance? It works.