“Scheme of Things,” “Hunt”
Tero Saarinen Company
March 7, 2013
The Joyce Theater
New York, NY
By Carol Pardo
Copyright ©2013 by Carol Pardo
Modern life is hell. That’s the take-away from the program presented by the Tero Saarinen Company, the first and the best-known—locally at any rate—of the three companies based in northernmost Europe and presented at the Joyce under the umbrella title “Ice Hot.” The presence of others is no comfort, as proven by the sextet “Scheme of Things” while Saarinen’s signature solo, to Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring,” shows that there’s no refuge in solitude either. There’s no way around it: modern life leaves no one unscathed.
“Scheme of Things,” made by the Finnish choreographer for Nederlands Dans Theater in 2009, opens with its cast of three men and three women in a line at center stage. Behind them looms a tall metal rectangle, like a tractor trailer ripped open to reveal row upon row of Coke cans, pull-tops presenting. The dancers are dressed in black, gray or mauve with sparkling accents. Modern life means dressed for mourning. Nature has been banished. The light of day has given way to that rectangle which bursts with light, headlights in a vertical pile-up. The score is a sound collage that drones on. Hell looks like a subterranean disco and sounds like it too.
The dancers break ranks to explore and try to make sense of all of this. Legs are extended in all directions, seeking, yearning for connection. But fingers test the air, stiff and sharp as barbed wire, warning everyone to keep their distance. The warning sometimes goes unheeded. The ensemble dancing is interlarded with three duets. In the first, two women explore each other with increasing intimacy until one, scared, panicky and desperate, makes her getaway by shrugging off the top layer of her costume, like a snake shedding its skin. Are all modern relationships superficial and disposable?
Conversely, Maria Nurmela strips Mikko Lampinen of enough layers of clothing (four by my count) to leave him bare-chested. Her reaction to a deeper knowledge of her partner is no different: fear, panic desperation. The third duet is a variation, but not an improvement, on the first. We’ve gotten the message. “Scheme of Things” would be twice as powerful were it half as long.
Unlike many works set to Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring,” and performed this year, Saarinen created his solo “Hunt” more than a decade ago, in 2002. This is its valedictory tour; it will be mothballed as the score’s centenary year draws to a close. The lights come up on Saarinen dressed like an ancient Egyptian scribe, but with webbing between his thighs. What follows is an odd mixture of human hunter and avian hunted, backward glances to ballet’s best known swans: Odette, Odile, Dying. The references are neither cloying nor condescending but—with each joint in his arms sharply articulated and hands closed to fists—tough, proud and a little dangerous. But the dance impulse is increasingly diluted as a light show takes over the stage of the Joyce. It starts with a swirling pattern that is part Loie Fuller, part bird feathers. Eventually the dancer’s entire body becomes a canvas even more crowded than a tatooed yakuza. Spotlights flash into the audience; they make you jump, but not blind. The theme is information overload, demonstrated rather than felt, in fact diluted by all the special effects, with too little dancing to make its point.