"Timecode Break"
Choreography by Christopher House
Toronto Dance Theatre
Joyce Theater
New York, NY
January 29, 2008
by Susan Reiter
copyright © 2008 Susan Reiter
These days, contemporary dance works with accompanying video projections are fast becoming the rule rather than the exception, so the fact that Christopher House's 2006 "Timecode Break" features a large screen suspended above center stage and accompanies much of the onstage action with video sequences does not exactly constitute novelty. Nor does the fact that it arrived in New York trailing plentiful critical hosannas, and having won several prizes, make it a particularly interesting, significant, or memorable work. Indeed, soon after the 65-minute piece has meandered its bland, inoffensive way across the Joyce stage, it began to evaporate, having left little distinctive imprint.
The curtain rose on twelve dancers standing, alert yet relaxed, in soft, pale simple tops and loose knee-length pants, on the dimly lit stage as Phil Strong's sound design opened with lulling nature sounds. Something about their deftly patterned positioning -- not in rigid formation, but scattered with a distinct diagonal pull -- summoned up an early-morning beach with seagulls arrayed across the sand.
But once they started moving, in blocky segments alternating between intimacy and ensemble vigor, very little on the stage had any similar evocative power. Efficient, determined and dutiful, the dancers often seemed to be working their way through a series of chores than inhabiting an artistic vision. Once the screen came to life with Nico Stagias' video, images of the dancers that duplicated or complimented what they were performing on stage offered more to look at, but never really deepened the experience. The onscreen movement sequences and close-ups often had a lovely, sensual texture, but that only made the straightforward sequences -- all too often in ensemble unison -- we saw onstage look even drier.
The dancers pranced, lunged and tilted with crisp, clean efficiency. Sometimes House brought them down to the floor for calm -- too calm -- reflective folding and rolling passages. There were plenty of comings and goings -- a solo passage here, some more tepid unison there, perhaps a duet - but nothing felt fully sustained, and the dancers tended more toward leaden deliberateness than vigorous, vibrant energy. Strong's score occasionally goes up tempo, but while it changes instrumentation and texture -- from soothing guitar riffs to more intense electronic sounds to wistful cello and piano -- it is not sufficiently dynamic to galvanize the action.
House, TDT's artistic director since 1994, seems to have been aiming for something cutting-edge in this collaboration with Stagias, but both on stage and onscreen, the material - while never less than competent -- is more mundane than ground-breaking. It's difficult to decipher any intention -- philosophical, spiritual, or experimental - behind what we are seeing. It happens, it fills up time, then it's over. And while it is filling that time, nothing seems to build or surprise. We begin to long for some rude interruption, some sign of someone lashing out. But everyone is pleasantly cooperative, even docile -- as are the movement sequences. Towards the end, the video displays a sensual cluster of dancers' bodies, with flesh pressing on flesh. But the promise of the temperature rising, some tension intruding, passes quickly.
