Switched-on Bach: Li Chiao-Ping updates the composer for the Laptop Age

by Susan Kepecs
Isthmus, November 21, 2003

“The Bach Project,” an ongoing oeuvre from Madison’s Li Chiao-Ping Dance, deconsructs Bach’s Cello Suites and reconstructs postmodern dance in one fell swoop. It’s an intellectual approach and – thanks to the long academic history of Terpsicho’re art in this town – one with a substantial audience.

Here’s the essence of last Thursday’s concert at the Wisconsin Union Theater. Contemporary composers Li’s worked with before – Amy Denio, Ryan Smith, and Stephen Vitiello – reinvent Bach for the Laptop Age. Electronic music usually doesn’t send me, but Li’s dancers are pros at channeling these currents of edgy sound. The results can be riveting.

In the first two works, though, this potentially mesmerizing multisensory buzz was minimized by weird costuming choices. “Where She Left Off,” an ensemble piece, had a lunar feel and featured Li’s trademark angular choreography. There were good moments, but too many subtleties of music and movement were attenuated by the dancers’ preposterous platinum-blond Baroque Barbie wigs.

“Nocturnus,” next up, was a Bach bacchanal, midnight in a garden of earthly Late Renaissance delights. Composer Denio, in period clothes and black hightop sneakers, vocalized an odd suite of sounds to a stage full of pagans wearing frock coats and lace collars, cavorting under a crescent moon. Besides the company, the cast included a corps of UW dance students and Li’s troupe of senior Community Dancers. Deconstructing the notion that performers have to be pros is a brave nod back to the democratic credo of ‘60s postmodern dance.

This approach can work – “Nocturnus” in particular would have been a very painterly, visual piece, except for the white, diaper-like bustles affixed to everyone’s rumps, which were more unsettling than the wigs in “Where She Left Off.”

The last piece, “Passiflora Gracilis,” was a dance in a different league – a pure, stripped-down work. Music, lighting, costuming, and choreography added up to a healthy whole. Vitiello accompanied the dancers on his G4 Powerbook, and Claude Heintz’s clever lighting bathed dark-clad dancers in lush daguerreotype tones. The harmonious blend of angular Li-isms and turned-out, classical enchaînements revealed this company’s newly expanded vocabulary and technique.

“Passiflora” was both sculptural and lyrical, and generously spiked with sparkling dancing by Colleen Coy and Andrea Harris – well worth seeing. With a little tweaking, the other two works would be, too.

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