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[Dance reviews]

Body talk
State of the art

BY CARLY CARIOLI

Alissa Cardone is a 28-year-old modern dancer and indie-rocker who dances with the Boston-based Paula Josa-Jones/Performance Works and Christine Bennett Dance and performs her songs as a guitar-piano duo called the Matters. Over the past few years, she’s been trying to introduce these two worlds to each other, with varying degrees of success. "I played Ted Leo to some dancers when I was driving down to the Vineyard for this performance that Paula was working on, and they were all like, ‘Can you shut this off?’ " She’s had better success taking dance to the indie-rock crowd. This past May, she programmed a successful "vaudeville" night at the Middle East that included indie-rockers Certainly, Sir; a flamenco dancer; a breakdance troupe; and a tap dancer accompanied by a banjo player. "It was insane," she laughs over tea in Kenmore Square, "and people had so much fun. Tons of kids were coming up to me and saying, ‘That was so cool, I’ve never seen flamenco before.’ I was saying to myself, ‘I love all this stuff, so everybody else should love it too!’ "

That same impulse has inspired several cross-pollinations that Cardone has been involved with — including her recent teaming with former Come guitarist Chris Brokaw for an evening of solo dance and guitar improvisation. And it informs her first major solo work, Body Tales from the New Millennium, which is getting a three-day run this weekend at Mobius. The performance is a collaboration with Cardone’s partners in the newly formed Outside Art Collective. The set design is by visual artist Dedalus Wainwright, the son of quilt artist and First Night founder Clara Wainwright. There’s an abstract video component by transplanted Muscovite Alla Kovgan, who also programs the Coolidge Corner’s "Video Balagan" series; and the soundtrack is by Seth Barger, a sonic collagist who records as United States of Belt. (Listen carefully and you may catch a few snippets of songs by Cardone’s beloved radical punk heroes Crass and Vice Squad, which she begged Barger to add to his usual pastiche of environmental and found sounds.)

Cardone has described Body Tales as a kind of avant-garde fairy tale informed by punk-rock idealism and by her visit to Japan, in 1999, to study with butoh master Min Tanaka. The affinity between punk and butoh was, to her, a natural one. Emerging in the late 1950s, in response to both the horrific end of World War II and the heavy stamp of modernity on a feudal society, butoh, like rock and roll, favored emotional intensity and stylistic simplicity over technical accuracy. Butoh emphasizes the individual’s creation of his or her own movement as opposed to, say, ballet’s mastering of pre-existing forms and principles. Part of butoh’s founding intent, as Cardone puts it, was "to fuck shit up." (Tatsumi Hijikata, the Iggy Pop of butoh, once described his art by saying that "butoh is a dead man standing desperately.") She cites as a turning point in her development a performance by Tanaka in an outdoor square earthen ditch; the whole of the 45-minute performance consisted of his walking, while in a tortuous backbend, from one corner of the square to its diagonal opposite and back again. "It made me cry — and I’d never cried at a dance performance before. It was the first time I saw in dance the same raw, intense immediacy that I used to feel going to punk shows. And it was a revelation to realize dance had that potential."

Cardone returned from Japan committed to developing environmental-based public performances; last year she staged a series of dances called "Weathering the Body" on Boston Common. For Body Tales, an ambitious and unorthodox multimedia piece, she’s been studying flamenco, breakdancing, wu-shu, and tai-chi. And what do her modern-dance colleagues think of her solo work? "I feel like people think I’m a little bit crazy," she laughs. "That might be my own insecurity. I think they think it’s cool, but I don’t know. It doesn’t really matter what they think."

"Body Tales for the New Millennium" is presented this Thursday through Saturday, November 29 through December 1, at 8 p.m. at Mobius, 354 Congress Street. Tickets are $10; call (617) 542-7416.

Issue Date: November 29 - December 6, 2001

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