They mix contrasting elements fluidly
BECKET -- The contemporary dance world is filled with choreographers who meld modern dance with ballet, creating seamless fusions that borrow freely from both. New York-based choreographer Ben Munisteri, whose company is at Jacob's Pillow, takes a different approach. He doesn't so much meld the two as playfully juxtapose elements of both, and the seams show unapologetically. A perfectly placed fouette releases into a fall to the floor for a lizardlike crawl. A graciously held arabesque abruptly kicks back into a sharp pinwheel walkover. Lines of bodies move with architectural formality, then two dancers spoon together in a soft curl, their pelvis wiggles looking almost lewd.
It's intriguingly unpredictable, which is Munisteri's intent. He calls himself an ''abstract collagist," but he doesn't just throw disparate elements together. There is surprising flow to his phrases, and it is startling how easily, almost casually, his skilled dancers make bizarre transitions. But for the viewer, there is often little sense of through-line or development to the phrases. The choreography is like a new language for which we can only understand bits and pieces, not the whole sentence. The dances are most effective in high-energy mode, when speed blurs the jarring stylistic disparities and quickly moving bodies create sophisticated patterns.
What helps tie Munisteri's work together is the music. The most cohesive piece on Thursday night's program, ''Turbine Mines," used part of Vangelis's soundtrack for the movie ''Blade Runner," complete with snippets of a grim-voiced Harrison Ford talking about replicants. It was an inspired choice, as the dancers popped in and out of robotic moves, alternating with lyrical sweeps and exuberant leaps. This work featured some exquisite, inventive partnering, as dancers swung under and around one another like cogs in an intricate machine, occasionally dipping in a fluid, all-too-human swoon.
''Thunderblood," given its world premiere, is set to a score played live by composer/violinist Evren Celimli, a Boston native, and bassist Mike Rivard. Complemented by an atmospheric electronic tape, Celimli's violin musings took melodic inspiration from 100-year-old wax cylinder recordings of Ottoman court musicians, giving the work a modal, Middle Eastern flavor enriched by floating atonalities. The dance itself was engaging but less distinctive. Clad in colorful unitards, the dancers alternated balletic postures with moves of athletic vigor -- dazzling turns, leaps that corkscrewed in midair, falls, and tumbles. Despite the vivid patterning and the obvious attention to detail and structure, the whole seemed like less than the sum of its parts.
Munisteri's eclectic musical tastes made other works feel disjointed. The mishmash of music in ''Not Human," ranging from Debussy to Devo, actually detracted from the dance, which seemed to try to tie together the animal world of the jungle and the wild life of the city. Dancers slithered, crawled, and skittered on all fours before plunging into a free-spirited, decidedly more human romp. The dance was most effective when the music was loud and fast and dancers could put their considerable energies into riding the beat.
In the excerpt from Munisteri's 2002 ''Muse of Fire," set to the music of Radiohead, the choreographer's roots in club dance showed in skillfully integrated footwork and sly gestures. One moment an arm might rise in a graceful balletic curve, another moment it was cocked sassily behind the head.
