Dance Reviews : Rudy Perez Group ‘Meets Hofmannsthal’

Watching an artwork evolve can be an adventure more exciting than any final result, so the downtown Los Angeles Photography Center was packed on Saturday for the first glimpse of Rudy Perez’s choreographic spectacle, “The Dance-Crazy Kid From New Jersey Meets Hofmannsthal.”

Created in collaboration with composer Michael Bayer, dramaturg Strawn Bovee and visual artist Steve DeGroodt, the work-in-progress will develop through a number of local engagements this year, reaching a point of completion in 1993. Perez himself called the Saturday version a sketch.

Indeed, any dance-crazy kid in the audience might have been disappointed, since Perez’s contribution consisted mainly of processional movement and brief tableaux linked by the imaginative use of a hand-held curtain. The sense of stillness could also have been his: a remarkable achievement considering how overbearing both text and score became.

The title of the piece refers to a friendship that began in 1906 between modern-dance pioneer Ruth St. Denis and Austrian author Hugo von Hofmannsthal, best known today as an opera librettist for Richard Strauss. Their writings form the nucleus of Bovee’s text (spoken by seven actors), with key images also incorporated by DeGroodt and Perez.

At the end, we see Lonny Gordon as Hofmannsthal wrap the veil-like curtain around Dura Snodgrass, turning her into the hooded icon that St. Denis became in her fabled Madonna dances. Bayer’s atmospheric score (played live) shimmers vibrantly at the transformation, though earlier his music evokes the spirit of St. Denis less than the ghost of Petrushka.

The life of the mind unites many of the segments (including an interview with a Beirut hostage), but right now the piece exists as a meditative cantata, with text and score dominating stage action.

Visual design proves even more minimalized by the physical/technical limitations of the Photo Center. But stay tuned. Like St. Denis herself in 1906, this “Dance-Crazy Kid” has quite an unpredictable future.