BETWEEN COMPOSURE AND OUTBURST:
“Puppy-Skills” at PS122
by Tom Pearson

In an evening of old and new works by Sally Silvers & Dancers Thursday night at PS122, the choreographer celebrated 25 years of dance-making with long-time collaborators, a few fresh faces, and an audience of die-hard fans.

The premieres of the evening offered Silvers at her best. In her closing solo, “Oven Rack,” Silvers wafted between sweet composure and surprising moments of movement Tourret’s. Perhaps a better opener than a closer, this solo epitomized the quirky quality and whimsical intelligence that Silvers has built her dance reputation around.

In the eponymous “Puppy-Skills,” the company of dancers provided intriguing quality contrasts, especially in one poignant moment when the mature and sensuous Vicky Shick crossed calmly in front of the younger fluttering dancers. Shick’s soft, clean inflections lent credibility to every movement she performed (as did Carolyn Hall’s in “Flap”). Offering a refreshing aggressiveness, Julie Atlas Muz attacked the movement with such earnest force that she endeared herself in her honesty against the intentional awkwardness of the clunky choreography. The younger dancers, recent Sarah Lawrence graduates, committed themselves with full-bodied attack, often contributing facial expressions and vocal inflections that helped buttress the otherwise dullish movement of both “Puppy-Skills” and “RUPT,” an older work that takes its cue from a handbook of mental aberrations from the 1950’s.

Much of Silver’s work (at least as presented on this particular program) is concerned primarily with conceptual issues, and the results are disappointing. When, in the sound score of “Puppy-Skills,” a clip of “Ich bin von Kopf bis Fuß auf Liebe eingestellt” (“Falling in Love Again”) played, the disconnect between the creative elements was foregrounded. Rather than going with or against the sentiment or cultivating irony around the iconic nature of the well-known tune, the choreography ignored it altogether as one more clip in a pastiche of sound, perhaps expecting some deeper meaning or intellectual cohesion to emerge from the simple juxtaposition of one thing with another. I’ve seen it work for Silvers in other instances, but here and throughout the piece it floundered noticeably.

The partnership of a purposefully disjointed solo figure and a simple video projection (in “Flap”), overbearing screeching and mechanized sound collages throughout, loosely structured improvisations that start strong and fail to resolve (“Wearable”) all added up to a body of dated material that left me feeling like the only person in the otherwise vocally appreciative audience that didn’t get the joke.

Other performers include Paige Martin, Jamie Di Mare, Marion Ramirez, Liz Filbrun, Pooh Kaye, and Cydney Wilkes.

“Puppy-Skills” continues today at 8pm. Tickets are $20/$10 for PS122 members. Order tickets online at http://www.theatermania.com/ or call 212-352-3101, 10am-6pm.

© 2005 Tom Pearson