DANCE REVIEW

MULTIMEDIUMS : Ground Level uses film and monologue to channel 'Show'
By Margaret Putnam
Special Contributor to The Dallas Morning News


"The best thing about Ground Level Dance Company's Short Suite Show is it's not The Nutcracker.

Is it ever not The Nutcracker.

Perversity, dark humor, brutality, aggression -- that's pretty much the focus of the show, which opened Thursday at Deep Ellum Opera Theatre. Its other singular virtue is brevity. It speeds along at a good clip, tossing out one angry-funny-dark sketch after the other.

Some take the form of monologues (Dalton James complaining about getting a GI Joe for Christmas when he had asked for a Barbie with go-go boots), film (Bryan Keith dwelling on male mayhem) and dance.

Though Mr. James brings his usual thrilling intesity to Big Frippin Hullabulloo, his riff on parental pressures and the absence of sexual detail on doll's, it's a pretty tame Mr. James. So ... What's That Word? is even milder, the humor ironic but without bite. "I'm an adult," Mr. James brags, as he explains how well he takes rejection, all the while stabbing pins and lighting a flame to a naked GI Joe.

The films give us another window into the male psyche, and it's obsessed with blood and gore. But because the first two (Reggie, The Emulation of Travis Bickle) are practically a sendup from film school artiness -- full of overexposed images, flickering frames and garbled sound -- the obsession with violence turns out to be tongue-in-cheek.

Wouldn't you know, if you want unadulterated aggression, look to women. The six dances -- choreographed and performed entirely by women -- jettison most notions of conventional femininity in favor of tough and powerful. Even in the opening Not Gonna Listen (Short 1), which finds a sensual Jenn Olson gyrating in the tiniest of black dresses to a pounding score, the sensuality is shot through with a mocking indifference. She tosses her head and jerks her body without pity, matching the Beastie Boys beat for beat.

There's yet more robotic thrashing in CoCo Loupe's Ouch, and Angela Sharp's Over Me, which turns out to be the evening's most cryptic work. Fierce and random despite occasional neat grouping of seven dancers in white, it has Catherine Livengood pitching into pretty, balletic poses as the rest kick, slash and pound.

The evening ends on a light note with Shanon Leyrer's jazzy Just Because, featuring Miles Davis, a park bench adn four women in cutoffs.

Margaret Putnam writes about dance for The Dallas Morning News.