Anchorage Daily News

Saturday's Alaska Dance Theatre program of work choreographed either for that show or for recent ADT concerts promised newness -- at least -- in addition to the innate athleticism of the genre.

Company artistic director Alice Bassler Sullivan's "Variations on Papillons," which debuted earlier this year, was set as formal ballet, relying on classical movement vocabulary throughout. It opened with 10 dancers filling the Discovery Theatre stage and arranged in a triangle, like bowling pins, and ensuing arrays remained mostly symmetrical. Schumann's series of piano sketches, also titled "Papillons," is highly danceable (it describes a New Year's Eve ball) and for the most part the choreography carefully complemented the music, as in the concluding Grandfather's Dance and midnight chimes.

The dancers, while individually good, revealed some rawness, however, in recurring mis-synchronization, a few hands raising at different times from the rest in what appeared designed as a unison sweep, for instance. This was most noticeable when the full group was on stage. In two- and three-dancer configurations, their timing was tighter.

Former ADT regular Anna Tremaine reprised a solo excerpt from "Internal Emotions," created for the company by Troy Powell of New York's Ailey II company in 2004. Her initial stretch from a bent position reflected the solo cello accompaniment. Almost everything that followed seemed to develop from that stretch, evoking the opening up of inner space.

A second work for solo dancer, set to solo cello music by Bach, was on the program: Sullivan's "In a Different Light," which saw the light of day last year. ADT instructor Nicole Maple was both elegant and able to explode on cue, as in a strong jete toward the end. But there was little connection between action and music, the latter sort of becoming wallpaper.

Even less coherent was Erica Essner's "Dreams of the Great Land," originally debuting here in March. It's highly mechanical movements were not out of place with Terry Riley's gamelan-style music. But there was neither narrative nor a clear architectural statement to generate any strong emotional reaction to the calisthenics.

On the other hand, Amy Young's eloquent "Estanatlehi, The Self Renewing One," created for ADT in 2006, was a remarkably moving piece of dance theater with a rewarding tale to tell:

Three blue-clad dancers flow in calm perfection to the music of Philip Glass like the Three Graces or yoga priestesses. A figure in grey and brown crawls weakly onstage from the side, joined by two more, all evoking anguish, frustration, weariness, terror. They scrape at themselves as if plagued by insects, find their movements blocked by invisible walls, shudder and fall.

The blue dancers minister with blessings and empathy. Slowly the greys follow their gestures -- which in a different context might have been lifting, focus and gifting -- until the greys can leave under their own power and the blues form a memorable tableau: the chief priestess sitting in a meditative pose, flanked by the other two, their arms forming a crescent that they rock back and forth.

The final piece, "Sand in Four Shifts" by ADT assistant director Courtland Weaver, set to music by Bill Frisell, was also memorable. Here though, the emotional force of the work was achieved by the aesthetically convincing succession of actions, a blend of both ballet and modern dance with a nod to pop. My favorite part was the second "movement," titled "sand man," which used a recurring slump, originating in the ankle, traveling up the leg and into the shoulders, as a kind of motif, and balanced playfulness with suggestions of struggle, winding up with a perky chorus line that abruptly shifted into perhaps the most poignant moment of the night.

Win, lose or draw, it says something about Anchorage and ADT that this amount of fresh choreography should have originated here in a relatively short period of time.

Find Mike Dunham online at adn.com/contact/mdunham or call 257-4332.

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