Oct. 23--"Repetition is good," Oren Laor says. "It makes you, and the viewers, go deeper."
Well, yes and no. The question of how much repetition is the right amount -- closely tied to the question of duration, or how long things should take onstage -- isn't easy. That much was obvious in a program at the MCA Stage, which runs through Sunday, featuring Chicago's Same Planet Different World Dance Theatre and Israeli dancer-choreographers Laor and Niv Sheinfeld.
Laor's quotation comes from a program note detailing the process behind the joint world premiere "Vanishing Point," a quartet he and Sheinfeld created in collaboration with its Same Planet dancers, whom he was advising. It's paired on this program with a repertory piece from each troupe: Sheinfeld and Laor's 2012 "Two Room Apartment" (providing a kind of road map to their work) and Same Planet's 2015 "Stripped."
Reconfigured from an acclaimed 1987 duet by Liat Dror and Nir Ben Gal, "Two Room Apartment" suggests the workaday Judson Church artists of the 1960s: Muttering to each other, dancer-choreographers Sheinfeld and Laor first lay down tape to form a rectangle, divide it in two, then slide into pedestrian movement, each striding purposefully around the perimeter of his own space.
In a parallel to Anton Chekhov's gun (the dramatic principle that anything added must be used): If dancers set up such clear boundaries, they must violate them. Sure enough, Laor becomes impatient and leaves his box; so does Sheinfeld, but as if by accident. Maybe because of its regimentation, "Two Room" strips these men, partners in life as well as work, to their essence: Laor is looser, freer, more impulsive, while the anxious, perhaps obsessive Sheinfeld can be steady and supportive. Inflected by humor bolstered by the music, this duet entertains in many ways, including Laor's flirtations with the audience as he struts around the stage utterly naked. But at 50 minutes, it wears out its welcome. Its evolutions are too slow.
"Vanishing Point" is a different story. Clocking in at just 15 minutes and obviously partly improvised, it's first vehement, almost childlike, as the four Same Planet dancers shake their booties and their hair to Janis Joplin's "Down on Me" (played twice), the dancers showing off a bracing spontaneity.
"Vanishing Point," seemingly set in a rehearsal, packs all the best of "Two Room" -- accumulating repetitions, humor, bald-faced seduction, gradual revelation of character -- into a compact package. In the quiet, moving second half, dancer Sarah Gonsiorowski builds a marvelous movement phrase right before our eyes, and Marley Schmidt slowly works out a unique, poignant salute/requiem. Loose cannons Joe Jensen and Omar Hernandez are just as exciting to watch.
Same Planet's quintet "Stripped," created by artistic director Joanna Rosenthal Read in collaboration with the dancers, debuted last February -- and seems to have mutated into a gentler, more moving work less obviously driven by its theme: the influence of technology on human relationship.
Though also a little long, "Stripped" is a wonderful dance in an entirely different vein than "Two Room," powered by gorgeous performances of honed, finely detailed choreography that obsessively brings together duos only to break them apart. The score's three disparate musical selections, edited to overlap, conclude with a boys choir singing John Tavener's dissonant, keening, finally beautifully harmonious setting of William Blake's "The Lamb."
Laura Molzahn is a freelance critic.
ctc-arts@tribpub.com
REVIEW: Same Planet Different World Dance Theatre and Oren Laor / Niv Sheinfeld
3 STARS
When: 7:30 p.m. Saturday-Sunday, 3 p.m. Sunday
Where: Museum of Contemporary Art Stage, 220 E. Chicago Ave.
Running time: 2 hours, 10 minutes
Tickets: $10-$30 (recommended for mature audiences) at 312-397-4010 or mcachicago.org
