Garrett + Moulton mark 15 years with zing
distinctive style and sensibility kept bubbling through. It had to do with a flowing release and exchange of energy, as the dancers’ bodies would compress with hunched shoulders, sunken necks and sharply angled elbows, then burst and flower open to connect with each other in feverishly inventive ways — hooked ankles, a head gripped and rolled in someone else’s hands, fluttering finger holds.
Or they exulted in the liberation of unhindered open space. David Robertson’s modulated lighting made the atmosphere in which they moved especially charged and activated.
In the Romanian stretches of “Zingo,” the Garrett + Moulton dynamic played out in comical acrobatics that were by quick turns rubbery and rachety, all of it perpetual, unpredictable motion. The Satie passages, which incorporated balloons and flower petals, seemed a little too studied, more coy than droll. But it was clear the panting dancers needed a break.
“The Mozart,” on a sequence of the composer’s solo piano extracts, was busy and eventful, perhaps to a fault, and hard to take in on a first encounter. A set of variations provided welcome solo showcases for each of the six impressively self-possessed dancers — Carolina Czechowska, Michael Galloway, Gretchen LaWall, Nol Simonse, Haiou Wang and Miche Wong.
Hard as it is to play favorites, Wang stood out for his transitions from tensile compactness to an eloquent limberness that seemed to flow from his flexible torso out to his mobile limbs and serene but expressive face.
While this version of “Ball Passing” was listed as a company premiere, the evening’s final piece was a reprise of something that’s been done many times, by as many as 68 performers.
The 18 on hand here were more than enough to create the utterly absorbing impression of some ethereal blue-shirted cheerleading team whose exchanges of soft rubber balls merged mind-bending assembly-line precision with sudden effusions of sheer exhilaration, their arms raised and undulating like long grasses bending in a breeze. It was one of those spine-shivering celebrations that seemed simultaneously to be about everything and only the movement happening at that very instant.
It had to do with a flowing release and exchange of energy, as the dancers’ bodies would compress, then burst and flower open to connect with each other in feverishly inventive ways.