Ross Hollenkamp and Andrew Ward of Scott Wells & Dancers. Photo by David Papas.
There is something downright nostalgic about the energized program Scott Wells and Dancers are performing with such abandon this weekend at Project Artaud Theater, the latest installment in ODC’s summertime presenting series. Artaud was the venue where Wells unveiled his extremely popular Home Again in 1991; the work has metamorphosed considerably since then and has undergone multiple cast changes over the years. After this 16th annual engagement, Wells is putting Home Again to sleep for a while, so this will probably be the last opportunity to see the piece, which is a kind of once-in-a-career brainstorm that should happen to every gifted choreographer.
If you’re looking for dancing imbued with daring and ravishing good humor, this is the place to come. If you’re looking for new works from Wells, then, maybe not. The only premiere on the program is a fresh version of the West Side Story Dances, made, yes, to the suite that Leonard Bernstein fashioned from his Broadway musical (with a jazz interpretation of the music spackled into the recording). I can’t believe that it is coincidental that Wells made this piece in the same year in which the San Francisco Ballet incorporated the original Jerome Robbins dances into its repertoire.
No reason to cry sacrilege. If he ever prepares a definitive version of his piece (it looked unfinished at Thursday’s performance), Wells can boast of an intriguing and valid gloss on the Robbins. Both choreographers offer stylizations of urban gang life and tribal rituals, and neither aims for sociological verisimilitude. In Robbins, ballet keeps intruding, sometimes to jarring effect. In Wells, the choreographer’s contact improvisation background looms over the project. The rival gang members don’t offer tendus or spin in this latest version. Instead, they thrust each other over their shoulders, soar through the air and let symmetry be damned. Wells disregards the racial overtones of the original. A couple of the dancers vocalize "Cool," and, honestly, they’re no better or worse than their S.F. Ballet counterparts last spring.
Wells’ 11 dancers go barefoot and he opens and later returns with a fanciful, if irrelevant, silhouette sequence. The rumble, with the women every bit as ferocious as the guys, emerges the most impressive episode. Yet, Wells handles the Latin-inflected "Dance at the Gym" with less confidence; while the romantic duet at the end looks truncated, suggesting that the choreographer ran out of time or inspiration. This West Side Story Dances needs to simmer for another season.
The program also includes the third (and first co-ed) version of Gym Mystics. This is the one that starts with a man alternately caressing a long beam and attempting to make the object defy gravity. Then, Wells dazzles with hand springs, somersaults and contact improv derring-do on a mat (the cheesy, romantic lighting works surprisingly well). But the piece really takes off in a quartet on a vertical bar, in which the dancers reference ballet and wire walking, accompanied by tenor Enrico Caruso’s ancient recording of Donizetti’s wistful "Una furtiva lagrima." The dancers compete, show off and ultimately team up. The mix of genders is, after all the casting realignments, the right one.
What’s missing here are the aerial ventures into the structural beams, which concluded the piece last year when it was shown at ODC Theater (Artaud is configured differently). Still, as an illustration of Wells’ talent for investing contact improvisation with emotional nuance, Gym Mystics will do very nicely. This weekend’s cast includes Hallie Aldrich, Lindsay Gauthier, Ross Hollenkamp, Nicole Imholz, Suzanne Lappas, Kellye McKee, Rajendra Serber and Andrew Ward.
The appeal of Home Again defies the years. Wells recounts that the piece emerged spontaneously in a college dorm setting, and that feeling of improvisation suddenly coagulating into artistic statement has not gone away. Wells’ collaborators include a Cageian radio track and conventional furniture on which the five dancers loll, roll, couple, leap and slump. Sometimes, they fly across the space into the waiting arms of a colleague. Occasionally, they melt into fleeting relationships and intermittently, the music, ranging from Talking Heads to Handel’s "Ombra mai fu," inspires a manic burst of energy.
Part of the charm of Home Again is the sense that the next time it won’t look like it did last night. It’s a goofy masterpiece for a slacker generation, and though Wells’ more recent works seem more carefully structured, the feeling of imagination running wild retains its appeal. Aldrich, Gauthier, Hollenkamp, Lappas and Ward are the fearless participants in these farewell performances.
Scott Wells & Dancers continue at Project Artaud (450 Florida St., San Francisco) through Saturday at 8 p.m. www.odctheater.org. 415.863.9834
