Word: solling
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...work by the same choreographer every few months, and to note what impressions remain the same, leaving imprints of the artist's style. This weekend at MIT local choreographer Beth Soll presented "Map," and as in "Clearfield," her piece performed earlier this spring, she was cavorting off to the side of the action like some imperious imp. But a performing persona is only one aspect of style; more interesting to see is how Soll's choreography transcends this way of moving...
...Soll's method in terms of movement technique is most clearly shown in "Lines of Perception," a dance by John Hofstetter which made up the first half of the program. Soll's frequent collaborator, Hofstetter, distilled the movement style they both favor and offered it bone-dry: a sequence of movements executed four times with four different spatial orientations. One figure (Hofstetter) walks at a visually imperceptible pace to trace the boundary of the performing space...
...controlled, and I thought modern dance was supposed to loosen things up," remarked a friend. The movement is as restrained as ballet. Soll and Hofstetter use the values of classical dance--continuous sequences punctuated by clear shifts in weight and sharp changes in direction--to fuse a new movement style...
...Soll subtitled "Clearfield" a "silent dance opera;" avant-garde choreographer Meredith Monk, who appeared at the Loeb last year, uses the same term to describe her art. In Monk's works there seems to exist a deeply-felt controlling image beyond the shifting motifs of the dance surface. I didn't sense any single undertow of meaning in "Clearfield," though perhaps Soll intended one. Rather, it seemed as if the dance began and ended in stillness, its images like whispers heard above a soft drone...
...EVEN TEMPO of changes in movement quality and the unvarying level of intensity in execution anchor the multiplicity of surface motifs in "Clearfield." The only larger sense of form seems to be increasing differentiation. In the first half Soll remains separate from her four companions, who change off in duets, trios, and quartets. In the second part she begins to interact with the others; the quartet breaks up and the choreography becomes more diffuse as each performer defines a sphere of his own. In this latter section there are deliberate breaks in the monotone of the first half. The dancers...