Dance review: Dance, storytelling intertwine in ‘Off White’

Patrick Van Osta

Dewane Worthington and Shena Menaker partner in “Proposal for an Exit.”

By Lauren Nelson
Daily Forty-Niner

Audiences of “Off White/ On White” were forced to keep their minds open as undergraduate and graduate students of the Cal State Long Beach dance department intertwined the art of storytelling with modern dance and ballet at the fall faculty dance concert that ran for five days last week at the Martha Knoebel Dance Theater.

The concert was made up of six diverse dances, in which each choreographer had a different objective that became obvious through each defining move, tumble and twirl. Just like theater, a story loomed behind every one of the dances performed, only this time the audience was left to interpret the plot on their own.

Dancers used body language and movement to speak to viewers. Each dancer performed in sync with other dancers, props and interesting music.

Illustrating a twisted, Matrix-like life cycle, “Proposal for an Exit” choreographed by Doug Nielsen featured dancers all dressed in white costumes. The dancers brought life to the stage with the complexity that forced viewers to marvel in its beauty even though the meaning might have been hard to grasp.

In a solo role, dancer Courtney Meadows gripped the audience and controlled the stage in “Jennifer’s Forest” choreographed by professor Susan McLain. In nothing but a nude leotard, Meadows appeared as a robot-like feline creature.

Watching every twist of the neck, every gaze that communed with the instruments emerging from the music, every flinch that created the character, it is obvious that Meadows successfully immersed herself in the character that possessed her for the evening.

“Shaken Tongues,” a group dance choreographed by New York guest choreographer, Bill Young, cast a different mood over the audience as the dancers hypnotized with unique movement and sudden blurts of hysteric laughter.

In flowing costumes that looked like bohemian pajamas, the dancers were psychedelic-like fairies. Assisted by an almost eerie music score, the dance gave off an energy that was felt in every jolt and twitch that the dancers adopted. They were in a trance that they could not escape, taking the audience through an acid trip gone berserk with free-flowing movements.

“Les Sylphide” was the epitome of classic ballet. With graceful movement the dancers pranced around the stage on the tips of their toes in point shoes, with arms free, but structured.

Choreographer Sophie Monat helped this CSULB performance live up to the ballet’s reputation of being classical in form, romantic in style and white in costume. The dancing was beautiful and elegant.

The audience was in awe of Katherine Healy, one of the dancers in “A Hurt as Big as Texas,” choreographed by professor Keith Johnson. Healy danced around the space of the stage with real knives hanging from her costume.

The clanking of the knives provided a satirical effect. Though the audience was interested to see if she could throw herself to the ground and spin without slicing herself, it was the artistry of Healy that kept them mystified and attentive as she effortlessly adopted the story of a heartbreak as big as Texas, and made it her own.