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Spending an evening with the witty, elegant dance creations of Lucy Bowen McCauley is like enjoying a glass of white burgundy -- it's clear but complex. With an expanded company of 14 and in two premieres Friday and Saturday at the Thomas Jefferson Theater, none of the choreographer's cut-glass precision in her balletic modern style was lost in the transition from the tiny Dance Place stage to the larger venue in Arlington. An arch "Luce Canons" featured a trio of chic Tippi Hedren-like women who stylishly played with slim feather boas and with one another to a Copland piano piece crisply performed live by Laurie V. Bunn. "Cello Pieces" showed more emotional depth, with six dancers sculpting shapes and relationships to cello works by Paganini, De Falla and Elgar. Of the two premieres, "Prelude to Battery" with music by Ned Rorem was oddly dispassionate. The dancers, members of D.C. Dance Theater, dressed in khaki unitards slashed with what seemed to be big red Band-Aids, were technically there as they lunged, hung and slunk around one another, but they did not seem to be engaged emotionally and so neither was the audience. But "Burleycue" was a triumph: The dancers initially mirrored the lovely canon style of the Telemann music by beginning a series of movements and repeating them, then segued into a series of pairs, trios and solos exploring their bodies and the power of movement with the wonder of audacious children. Bowen McCauley is the only choreographer I've seen who can take the most common or even vulgar movement, such as the shimmy or pelvic thrust, and elevate it into an aristocratic art, yet still manage to retain the humor and pleasure of it all.
© Copyright 1997 The Washington Post Company
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