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Review

Dancing in the dark

By MARTY CLEAR
Published October 15, 2005

TAMPA - "You are small but you are mighty" Danial Shapiro said to an audience of a few hundred people at the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center on Thursday night.

The crowd for Anytown, a brand-new full-length work from Shapiro & Smith Dance, was indeed quite small. But modern dance fans in Tampa have come to expect that. Even major companies have trouble attracting decent crowds. In a talk-back with Shapiro and partner Joanie Smith after the performance, local dance aficionados expressed dismay and even a little embarrassment about that.

Anytown, unfortunately, isn't likely to do much to help bolster Tampa's dance audience. Set to music by Bruce Springsteen and E Street Band members Patty Scialfa (Springsteen's wife) and Soozie Tyrell (the sister of choreographer Smith), the show proved well-intentioned, occasionally lovely, but ultimately uninspired and uninspiring.

The concept, which would have been totally unrecognizable if it hadn't been divulged in preperformance comments from Smith and Shapiro, has to do with three families that gradually come together and form a community.

Although it's conceived as a whole, Anytown is really a series of shorter dances. The music ranges from Springsteen faves (Human Touch, Born in the USA) to instrumental pieces composed by Tyrell specifically for this work.

Almost all of the pieces were pleasant and a few were invigorating. Among the best, both in the second act, were Maria's Bed and Ferdouganal.

Maria's Bed, set to a Springsteen song, had most of the company dancing while seated, forming a church congregation. Behind them, two dancers appeared on a bed that drifted around the stage - an intriguing but obscure recurring image in the evening.

Ferdouganal was an abstract and very musical solo by Kelly Drummond Cawthon, to music by Tyrell.

Sets and costumes (both by Mathew J. Lefebvre) were gorgeous throughout, and the sound (directed by Katie Whitlock) was crystalline.

The music often seemed to take the foreground, especially because lyrics were occasionally projected on a screen behind the dancers. Often it seemed that the dancers were supporting the music, rather than the other way around. The result was a feeling more akin to watching a music video than experiencing dance.

[Last modified October 15, 2005, 01:14:05]