Goldhuber & Latsky with Lesley Dill at P.S. 122
BY JANET KOPLOS

Worst Case Scenario, 1999.

On first thought, it seems an odd proposition: the artist Lesley Dill, best known for her visual realizations of the halting, emotionally fragile poetry of Emily Dickinson, collaborating on a dance performance centered on hatred and including implications of violence. She designed the costumes, took the photographs which were projected on scrims that formed the set, codirected and made a few strategic appearances onstage.

"Worst Case Scenario" was choreographed and danced by Lawrence Goldhuber and Heidi Latsky, who met in the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company. Goldhuber had joined as an actor and then began to dance--a surprising eventuality because he is a huge, torpedo-shaped man who has nothing of a "dancer's body" except the ability to physically convey emotion. Latsky is quite small, and they exploit the contrast. The performance unfolded as a series of vignettes--sometimes solos, sometimes duets--in which various relationships and temperaments were displayed: she punched him, he fell but rebounded, he beat himself, she folded and flexed and stretched, they moved about linked by tape stretched between their mouths, he lifted and shifted her as if she were no more than a baguette, they caressed each other with their heads.

Just as memorable as these actions were the projected black-and-white images of the two caught in specific poses and gestures--Dill included photos of the dancers in an exhibition last fall at George Adams Gallery--and "stage pictures" composed with their stilled bodies in Dill's extraordinary costumes. In the opening sequence, Goldhuber slogged diagonally across the stage in a pair of black trousers that flowed from the hem to function as a sort of carpet on which he pulled Latsky and Dill. At another point, his already ample proportions were inflated by an enormous peach-colored suit. Latsky danced in gloves so long-fingered that they suggested roots. Another time her conflicting and shifting emotions were symbolized by a black dress completely lined in turnabout white that was revealed by purposeful movements.

Words appeared on most of these costumes, but usually only fragments were readable. They were scrawled by hand in Dill's usual style. She physically played a part in two unsettling moments during the performance. Crouching front and center, she pulled down the top of Latsky's dress, wrote on the dancer's back in some unidentified black stuff the words "I hate your very soul," and then licked the letters off. At another moment, Latsky entered in a puffy Victorian gown; from slits in the garment, Goldhuber and Dill extracted long white cloth tapes covered with words, while Latsky repeatedly rolled up and released similar tapes that seemed to emerge from her eyes (by means of unobtrusive glasses). As in Dill's Dickinson works, the words here were less complete statements than evidence of attempted communication and verbalized feeling; as in her recent dark photographs, the elliptical visions were morose or threatening. The eloquent physical expression of the two dancers was another language.

COPYRIGHT 1999 Brant Publications, Inc.

COPYRIGHT 2000 Gale Group