Reviews

ADDISON – Promises, promises. Out of the Loop Festival may wish to tease us with the loopy, but Saturday afternoon offered plain vanilla. Or, to switch metaphors, dance barely made liftoff – and briefly at that.

MILTON HINNANT/DMN

Elisa De La Rosa (left), Sonja Howard and Kiera Amison (right) of Muscle Memory Dance Theatre performed Saturday.

Waco-based Out on a Limb Dance Company seized the afternoon's one opportunity to go avant-garde. Exactly what She Drew a Picture of a Whale was all about, is anyone's guess, but enough was going on to keep one's interest. In a little white slip, L. Brooke Schlecte lies flat several feet away from an open suitcase, its contents strewn around the floor. Contents? Paper.

A video projection displays Rachel Bruce Johnson in a cream slip, another suitcase, and more paper. The two seem confined in their own universe, but one that is almost identical: We view simultaneously Ms. Johnson lying prone behind the suitcase, legs visible, while Ms. Schlecte searches for a pen.

Ms. Schlecte has more to do, however. With maniacal furry, she scribbles blue ink on an arm and midsection and pulls off the first layer of clothes, getting more agitated by the moment. Twitching and lurching, she makes her way to the suitcase, there to stretch out in defeat. The video disappears, and the halo of light covering her gets smaller and smaller until she is no longer visible.

It was just odd enough to think that we would be getting more of the same. But no, it was back to plain old modern dance. Muscle Memory Dance Theatre covered a lot of ground, with plenty of ups and downs. The up was its baroque version of the Hatfield's and McCoy's Embellish, set to Mozart and dispatching two opposing groups in tutus.

Despite the dramatic possibilities of a box (Qubix) and dresser drawers and a rope (The Choke), not much happened in either. In Qubix, Jennifer Holyfield and Karla V. Mercado kick their cubes around, stand on them and brandish them as a threat. That's as far as it goes.

We know there is bad blood between Philip Elson and Lesley Snelson-Figueroa in The Choke as they crisscross each other with wary dislike. Mr. Elson cagily offers champagne. (Is it poison? Or a truce?) He makes the mistake of an embrace, and ends up dead. If you want harrowing, try Flemming Flint's The Lesson and Lester Horton's The Beloved.

It may seem like cheating to rely on ropes suspended from the ceiling and a big ring, but Perpetual Motion/Modern Dance Oklahoma's Semblance was by far the best thing on the program. It had the real sense of connection between dancers. Kim Kieffer-Williams and Rebecca vonBargen stretch, hang upside down, support one another with hands or feet, in a slow, dreamlike smoothness. One wears white, the other black, and at the end they curl up in perfect ying-yang pose.

• Today at 7:30 p.m., WaterTower Theatre, 15650 Addison Road, Addison. $15, or $50 for a festival pass. Call 972-450-6232 or www.watertowertheatre.org.

Margaret Putnam is a Richardson-based writer who covers dance.

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