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Show Dance Opening 'Simply Beautiful' The Matriarch A highly symbolistic and metaphorical meta-phorical new piece is Phillip Kee-ler's Kee-ler's "Danse Intime." Having to do with our matriarchial society, the possessive, dominant mother-figure, this ballet portrays birth, growth, marriage, family relationships, with considerable complexity and dramatic dra-matic imagination. It was not per fectly performed, due in part to its difficulty and rapidity, but lead dancers Linda C. Smith, Bill Evans and Tim Wengerd were excellent as mother, father, and first-born son. Gladys Gladstone's solo work at the piano and Marty Yeager's outre, brilliant-colored costumes were very well done. By MARK WOODWORTH If beauty saves, as Michelangelo thought, then the dancers and directors di-rectors of the University Repertory Dance Theatre have a well-turned foot inside heaven's doors. Their opening concert of the season, Oct. 6 and 7 at Kingsbury Hall, was simply beautiful, as well as being an intriguing aggregation of dance styles modern and far out. To the extent of providing vivid sensory and aesthetic stimuli, the concert was a raging success. Unfortunately Un-fortunately for some, modern dance at its most innovative is often incomprehensible; it can be as infuriatingly abstract as twelve-tone twelve-tone music, and quite as bewildering, bewilder-ing, if one is not prepared to feel a visceral response. Glance On Mods This is not to say Repertory Dance Theatre is out of touch with reality, for its "Go Eleven" turned a keen flash glance on mod-fads of the times, showing "where it's at" and advising to "Be more, sense more, love more." Joan Woodbury's pert choreography raced through a dozen moods, from plaintive and saucy, to wayward and spirited. Kay Barrell's glittering glitter-ing plastic mini-dresses were visual knock-outs. Shirley Ririe's pensive, poetic creation, "S u m m e r Canticle," ranged more widely, from the dark and foreboding sounds of a blue morning, through the blistering heat of noon (with a wild surf-ride, the suntan-lotion-and-shades ritual, the cult of the flesh with its lan-quor lan-quor and lasciviousness), to the low-tide dolor and blue-black love-in love-in that is the night at its most moonstruck. Arc of Arms Of a different stripe is "Chant," by Tim Wengerd, a sharply articulated artic-ulated work danced to a tricky and undiminishing percussive din courtesy of John Cage and Lou Harrison. Chant plays off the arc of arms (with an occasional nod to Jose Limon) against colored stripes on body tights. The rhythm is taxing, as dancers put their bright lines through flexion and torsion, but technique and polish carry them through. A thing of unearthly, deja vu beauty was Mrs. Woodbury's "Re-currencies," "Re-currencies," to Ned Rorem's shining shin-ing music for, among other things, oboe and harp. What is it about? It's about slow and rolling, lulling and hugging, breaths of joy and silence, reciprocal things a dreamy girl-teeter on a boy-teeter; it's about drifting sways, somnolence, som-nolence, acrobatic anythings, a cyclical return to shapes, rises and falls, lovers' ways. Recurrencies is warm as a womb, with the poignant poig-nant loosening of a girl's bound-up hair and a dim, dark evolution of floor forms growing into blue life a superbly-designed and moving piece. |