RAT like a dance

[Bobby Mrozek <bby@earthlink.net>]

A few years ago, Danny Hoch, Jo Bonney and a design crew spent a long 
hot Baltimore August at Theatre Project developing and performing the 
"Some People" piece prior to the run at the Public and the subsequent 
HBO filming.  In the midst of a run-through, a technical concern stopped 
the process for about 20 minutes.  With the idle time, Danny turned to 
me and said, "Sometimes all of life is like a dance."  Innocuosly, he 
then proceeded to run the scene in silence, while all others dealt the 
design issue.  Eventually, "Some People" garnered intense critical and 
popular acclaim.  Most all of those rave reviews described the 
effortless, and spontanious improvisation.  Indeed, there is in Hoch's 
work an physical "alive" quality, which is actually the product of an 
extremely well choreographed and rehearsed process (amoung other things, 
because as we know, it's never one thing).  

I'm mentioning this as it realates to what I've noticed to be an 
interest amoung the rat list of the physical and gesture aspects of 
creating their work.  And that there is a performance opening tomorrow 
at Danspace Project (New York), which I think will be of some interest, 
particularly to theatre makers who are interested in physical, gesture, 
movement theatre.  Allyson Green Dance, which is, obviously a dance 
company -- and a very good one at that, and not unlike a movemnt theatre 
company -- employs a powerful pallet of  expressive ideas in their 
performance.  I highly recommend seeing it. At Dancespace Project at St. 
Mark's Church in-the-Bowery, Feb. 24 - 27 at 8:30. 212-674-8194.