The first noticeable element of the evening’s third dance was the music. It was cold, full of odd sound effects, and very modern. The second noticeable element was the fact that the dancers started as soon as the lights turned on. I was pleased with this traditional timing of the choreography, and the good beginning and the interesting music seemed to bode well for the rest of the dance.

Shortly into the choreography, I was struck by the deft movements of the dancers and the slow pace of their motions. Every step was done in almost slow motion. There were none of the lightning pirouettes that were so prominent in the first dance, and none of the playful skipping and dashing of the second dance. Another subtler characteristic of the dancers was their endless motion. They were moving slowly and carefully, yes, but they were moving, always moving with no pauses between motions. This created an extremely fluid quality in the dance. The time that the dancers had allowed them to do everything so carefully, and they carefully, gracefully, kept moving and moving. And the beautiful thing was that they didn’t even seem to be exerting themselves. I was so taken with the grace and fluidity of the dancers that at one point when the music had progressed to an almost grating presence and some people’s heads were throbbing, I decided that their remarkable precision was enough to carry their whole performance because it was so pleasant to look at.

As for the music; while at first I thought it sounded promising, soon I began to notice it for its strangeness rather than for its interestingness. The music turned out to be mostly a repetition of a dull, underlying beat punctuated with odd sound effects reminiscent of a science fiction setting, particularly a spaceship. (In my notes I recorded it to be “slightly discordant.”) The spaceship came to mind also because of the futuristic tones of the costumes, which included shiny metallic colored pants, and the darkness of the walls and the floor. Some of the sound effects in the music sounded like the whirring of machinery or a disembodied robotic voice over an intercom. Since the overall effect of the dance reminded me of outer space, and the dancers seemed to follow a more modern style of dance, in my notes I dubbed the genre of the dance as futuristic ballet.

I must admit that I was slightly confused by some of the aspects of the dance. While I was trying to follow the progression of the choreography, I noticed that every dancer was doing his/her own thing. Effectively, there were a bunch of separate dances going on simultaneously. I felt that there was a lack of a story; the dancers were all focused on their own individual dance, and there seemed to be no connection between what all of them were doing. The only times that all of the dancers were doing the same thing was when they all stopped moving at the same time a couple of times throughout the dance. (This was something I did not really see the point in.)

Another aspect that confused me was the inconsistency in formations. Sometimes a couple of dancers would pair up to dance together, leaving all of the others still stuck in their private routines, and not everyone would get a turn to dance with a partner. Also, although there were seven dancers in total, there were oftentimes only six dancers on the stage. When the dance was finally over and the dancers lined up to take their bows, I did a quick head count to ascertain that there were indeed seven dancers.

Overall, I was impressed with the dancers’ abilities to operate like a set of well-oiled gears. I did not exactly witness harmony among the dancers, but they were all beautifully fluid, if not slightly repetitive. However, the dance was definitely interesting to watch. The choreographer probably had quite a job teaching all those different dances to each individual dancer. I would only venture to suggest one improvement for next time – although I didn’t mind the music terribly, perhaps a more conventional music style would be a better option so that less people would come out of the theater wincing and massaging their ears.