E-Mail This Article to a Friend Spindrift ‘3 Women’ at Concord BY MARCIA B. SIEGEL
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Dana Reitz says her new Sea Walk is based on the shapes and spaces, the translucent colors and the organic development, of shells. This makes a nice metaphor for the three-woman trio that had its first performance last Thursday at Concord Summer Stages Dance, but it doesn’t necessarily define the piece. During the hour-long dance, many other sea-related images came to mind, suggested by the title and by the remarkable performances of Reitz, Sara Rudner, and Christine Uchida.

All three women exemplify the intelligent, individual, and physically arresting type of dancer who works with Twyla Tharp. Reitz began choreographing solos and chamber dances after a brief adventure with one of Tharp’s earliest working groups; Rudner and Uchida starred in the legendary Tharp company of the 1970s and ’80s. Sea Walk, like all of Reitz’s work, is a subtle improvisation on a set of shared movement themes. It’s so carefully rehearsed yet spontaneously created that you can’t really say who choreographed it.

The dance is a continuous series of episodes in silence. In a dim and changeable light (designed by Rick Martin) the women swirl through and recede like the tide on a calm day. Sometimes they seem to be describing the look of the water as it eddies around the rocks or sweeps over the shallows. Sometimes they become the water, splashing up in sudden jumps or swaying like seagrass in the wind. Sometimes they just abandon the nature imagery and become women walking by the sea.

The light plays on them from above and behind, throws their shadows onto the walls, or creates pools of theatrical brightness. Despite the outdoor implications, it never feels like broad daylight. The filmy robes in smoke gray and sandy beige that the women wear take on turquoise and silver undertones in certain glints of light. Daniel Michaelson’s layered costume designs create a kind of carapace around each dancer’s body, camouflaging her as it allows her to glide in and out.

Uchida began the piece, dipping and swaying in spirals. She planted each foot in sturdy contact with the ground as she walked. Later on she exploded quietly with accelerating turns and quick small changes of direction. I felt powerful reserves of energy in her, and also moments when that energy seemed to flag. Rudner projected a sense of amplitude, with big enveloping gestures, expansive shoulders and upper torso, and a little sequence of fast grapevine twists and frisky kicking-back steps.

Reitz, tall and straight, seemed at times a kind of sentinel, stalking through the space, marking out the boundaries close in around her body and far away, with winding, looping, throwing, shaking, waving, chopping, flipping gestures. She appears the most understated of performers, and yet with the slightest inward curve of the torso, thrust of the foot, or alteration of her focus, she can transform herself from goddess to goofball.

There were tiny encounters and conversational interchanges among the three. They’d meet, stroll a few steps together, pause, double back, savoring their telepathic game of stopping and going. Bent forward, hands braced on the back of their hips, they gathered to commiserate about aching muscles and sore knees, then went on again, pacing, pushing at the air currents, watching one another.

Reitz’s dance originates from deep, calm places. To the everyday multi-tasker, it looks sparse, flat. Some people wanted more contrasts or bigger effects. But it’s like a deserted beach: the more you look at it, the more you see. I’ve known all three women, as dancers and friends, for decades, but as the dance went on, I discovered new things about them, and as the light began to fade for good, I thought I was just beginning to know them. After the room went dark, the audience was absolutely still for what seemed like half a day, until the lights came up for the bows.