Zeltzman Dances American Themes

Author: Michael Hatch

The multimedia dance work of Dominique Zeltzman and Selene Colburn, "The Stomach Never Lies: True Confessions and Moving Images," performed this past Thursday and Friday, March 6 and 7, at the Flynn Space in Burlington, tackled topics ranging from the possible war with Iraq to Homer's epic, "The Odyssey," to suicide and obsession, with a self-consciousness bordering on crafted naivetÈ.
The former San Francisco dancers presented two individual works each and one collaborative piece, "Air Mail Dance," from the choreographer Remy Charlip. Zeltzman's solo work came first with "No Ordinary Chore," a chipper-voiced contemplation of suicide, and "The Stalker in Me," a phonebook induced fantasy about the what-ifs and whom-I've-never-mets that impair real relationships.
In "No Ordinary Chore," dance and narration were linked closely, the former as an abstraction of the latter. Zeltzman's quirky girlish voice grated uncomfortably with the subject's debate centering on the appropriate modes of committing suicide.
The short, childlike gestures and skipping steps or cartwheels along with the bubble-gum vocal tones acted in sharp contrast to the dark thoughts on how to make a proper go out of offing yourself how to make the smallest mess and leave the apartment in the best care for those friends who find you.
The discomfort and wit paired against playful movement made "No Ordinary Chore" a beautiful and disturbing piece.
Highly dependant on multimedia, "The Stalker in Me," was less pure dance than choreographed performance drama.
A video sequence narrated the crush of a five-year-old on her older brother's girlfriend and then lapsed into a search for that same woman 20 years later who had supposedly become a lesbian with a younger lover, ready now for the unforgotten crush of that little girl narrator.
The piece expanded to the dance floor with a backlit woman at a sewing machine stitching together pages of the phone book. A dance element stuck up with the song, "Dream," by the Everly Brothers: "Whenever I want you all I have to do is dreeeaam, dream, dream, dream, dreeeaam..."
The dance went into wild fluctuations of expression and pose, eventually making out with names in the phone book when the phone rang and the lights cut out.
The piece was a clever and amusing parable about the perils of fantasy.
"Alonesome and Twosome," an "Air Mail Dance," was a duet sent to these two as a set of drawn movements by Charlip, to which they choreographed the connecting movements.
The full-bodied and romantic European music, also chosen by Charlip, and his melodramatic poses were almost parodied by Zeltzman and Colburn as they stumbled and dragged themselves along, striking given heroic poses.
This muscular, intentional awkwardness, seen also in Zeltzman's solos, underscored Colburn's following pieces as well as created a self-consciousness that leaned towards untrained movement.
The control and experience were there, but they were hidden in the actions and awkwardness of quotidian movements.
"Anti-war Propaganda Movie" and "O Muse," the last two works done by Colburn, operated as a pair inspired by the threat of war and by Colburn's grant stipulating "The Odyssey" as source material. The hammy action movie, filmed in a dance studio basement, featured the kind of slow-motion play fighting done by children on a Sunday afternoon.
This footage contrasted with clips from anti-war marches and text from "The Odyssey," but came across as a piece only partially completed. "O Muse," a title taken from the characteristic first line of the Odyssey, had a similar feeling of partiality, of needing more work.
The dance first involved a very abrupt narration and accompanying enactment of the entire odyssey, done cliff-note style, like a middle school play. But this was intentional evidently, as Colburn came out directly to discuss with the audience the process of her creation.
She informed straight-faced that "when I cover my eyes you may be reminded of the Cyclops [pause], you would be correct," and concludes that she is, "just another person moving out there with no real answers [to the question of war]," before moving into her final solo.
While I began by enjoying the wit and giggles that come from that self-conscious awareness articulated by Zeltzman and Colburn, by the end of the last solo the weight of all that sarcasm and second-guessing had me wondering whether the two began with any content at all.
Moderation was missing from all of this reverse didactic explanation and discomfited self-referencing.
While these tactics can be effective at times and certainly would have been had I seen each piece individually, the combination of the pieces sacrificed their veracity.
The dance element became overshadowed by multi-media constructions, and the overemphasis on naivetÈ as a source of movement was not counterbalanced by many true displays of talent and ability.
Form followed function but must have gotten lost somewhere down the line.