Local Talents Make Good

By  Florence Ferraro

We did our part by getting there, and Bowen McCauley Dance responded with an enjoyable show. Lucy Bowen McCauley choreographed It's About Time, the first dance, in 1998. Performed to Respighi's Suite in G major for Orchestra and Organ, BMD takes an interesting tack by staging the dance with what looks like the inverted pipes of a huge pipe organ hanging from the stage ceiling. The dancers, who are clad in rosy colored leotards with Chagall- like designs on them, seem to fly from the pipes as notes. The dance struck me as a tad literal, with aspects such as the male dancers performing to the low notes and the females to the high, but the dance technique of the company is solid. One longed for a dance uniquely styled to the body types of the company, which represented a range of physicality, not just your typical ballerinas in their 20s. This individuality, a strength of the company, was well exploited in the next dance.

Hold Sway, created last year by Ms. Bowen McCauley, was almost everything that the first dance was not. It was uniquely innovative and humorous. One very tall female dancer, sometimes on pointe, occupied the apex of a dance triangle with two more diminutive dancers, similarly clad, on either side. One could be intrigued by the creation of shapes in motion that these three generated. Like modern art, this dance went beyond stated meaning, to forms and shapes which imply a more subjective, personal meaning. But there was a humor and humanity to this dance as well, as the three held "sway" over each other's movements, literally and figuratively. The unique endowments of each of the three dancers were celebrated.

The third dance, the premiere of Bowen McCauley's Saffron Dreams, demonstrated the striking variety in the Bowen McCauley dance repertoire. It was an ethereally costumed, evocative piece, involving dancers swathed in orange diaphanous dress. They moved sinuously across the stage. There was a Middle Eastern strain to their performance. Van Beethoven and Rahul Dev Burman wrote the music. This is Camper Van Beethoven, not Ludwig. I thought of the snake charmer scene in The Nutcracker performed as a pas de deux.

Musica Ricercata concluded the program. This offering was performed to live piano music. Live music is something that BMD has purposefully incorporated since the company's inception in 1996.

BMD's vision of outreach, teaching and community involvement have also been an important part of the company's identity over the past several years. The evening served as a perfect reminder of the freshness of local talent and our need to participate in cultural events demonstrating the various visions that sustain the American Dream.