by Sylviane Gold
You know you're in the New Victory Theater, you know you're sitting down, you know you're safe. Still, when a member of Buglisi / Foreman Dance strides toward you, you want to get out of the way. These performers mean business when they merely walk; you can imagine what happens when they dance.
Of course, it's better not to imagine at all, and to go this weekend to see for yourself the deep, rich, utterly satisfying program being presented by this remarkable troupe, founded in 1994 by four veterans of the Martha Graham Company. The 17-member Buglisi / Foreman is one of those ensembles - and there aren't many around - where you will be rewarded no matter which dancer your eye happens to fall on. That dancer will be exquisitely costumed in a setting that someone has thought about. The music, whether taped, live or a combination of both, will be worth listening to on its own. And the repertory, provided by the founding choreographers, Jacqulyn Buglisi and Donlin Foreman, will engage the mind and emotions as well as indulge the senses.
The evening gets off to a roaringly theatrical start with Buglisi's homage to Sarah Bernhardt - and by extension to all those other divas from the "we – had – faces school of performing. As danced by the unfailingly compelling Terese Capucilli, Bernhardt is a cross between Graham and Gloria Swanson, with some Auntie Mame thrown in. The piece probably gives us a little too much of a good thing, but it perfectly sets the tone for what is to come: charisma, charisma, and more charisma.
It's there in spades in the two works from last year, Foreman's magnificent and affecting "Suite; Arms Around Me" and Buglisi's haunted and mysterious "Suspended Women.” And it shows up in different ways in the two premieres on the program, Buglisi's "Sand" and Foreman's "Mean Ole World." The first, set to segments of a string quartet by Philip Glass, is a dance for three couples inspired, according to the program note, by "the beauty of the desert and the soil of the earth we so cherish." It has a stunning set of dappled, cement-hued hangings by the artist Jacobo Borges; streaky, dusty-looking costumes by A. Christina Giannini, and smoky lighting effects by Clifton Taylor. The choreography, full of difficult, intricate lifts and precarious balances, is brilliantly performed (by Christine Dakin and Stephen Pier in particular). But it never quite lives up to the evocative power of its surroundings.
"Mean Ole World" is set to Lisa DeSpain's intoxicating jazz score, played live by the six-man combo Catfish Corner, and the stage is bare except for the soft lighting of Jack Mehler. For the piece's seven women, Elisa Jimenez has concocted sexy dresses of satin and velvet in an array of winey colors; the three men wear earth tones. And the dancers dig into Foreman's crisp struts and jitterbuggy moves with so much gusto that, well, you'll want to step aside.
