BAX/Brooklyn Arts Exchange's First Weekends Performance Series featuring Jesse Phillips Fein, Rachel Thorne Germond and Rebecca Lazier/Terrain

BAX presented three new works by emerging choreographers Jesse Phillips Fein, Rachel Thorne Germond and Rebecca Lazier/Terrain as part of its First Weekends New Performance and Discussion Series (Feb.). Exploring the concept of flesh- its inability to wholly express thoughts, emotions and gender- Fein's Flesh Box features four dancers who fall, convulse and disturb the audience through sporadic, piecemeal movements. Overall, Flesh Box lacked clarity in part due to rambling movement passages. Germond's Rejoinder sings a sweet tune of separation, sex and innocent love as she and Kristina Fluty caressingly plunge and aggressively soar throughout the space in crisp, clean movements that abound with energy and grace. A cameo performance by Andrew Janetti as a "sawman" contributes literal meaning to the dance; he saws a block of wood to represent a severed relationship. It is a refreshing display of emotional transparency. In The Insiders Guide to the Secret Rules of PMD [postmodern dance], Rebecca Lazier/Terrain hilariously mocks the foundations of postmodern dance. With a clever and comical narrative musical score, Lazier's three dancers perform satirical solos that evoke the superficialities of making "dance" in the too-hip, too-cool artistic world. As they leap, slide, sway, twitch, and pirouette across the floor with indelible wit, chic and charm, they are like marionettes, puppets of the "Big Brother" choreographer. Jessica Weiss is a dancer and writer based in New York.

http://www.thebrooklynrail.org/dance/march04/reviews.html

- Jessica Weiss, 2004