Netherlands troupe finds new energy in old pieces

The program was a survey of dances from earlier works. (Deen van Meer)

Few things can strike such apprehension in a critic as the news that a company will be performing an evening of excerpts of earlier dances. Such "greatest hits" compilations are often problematic, whether they're Bob Dylan songs or a postmodern dance company's works.

Yet "Sporen (Traces)" - the concert-length dance that the Netherlands-based Leine & Roebana performed this past weekend at the Institute of Contemporary Art - suffers not from a surfeit of unrelated material, but rather from an occasionally benumbing lack of movement variety. Fortunately, much of that movement is striking, and the seven hard-working dancers are beautiful performers, a pleasure to watch.

A press release from CRASHarts, which presented the company, explains that "what began as a desire to perform selected pieces of past work became, in the process, an entirely new creation." While there is a lot of costume changing and a long list of musical and soundscape accompaniment, the parts do end up feeling of a piece, albeit a temperamental one.

The brief, shocking cacophony of sound that formally begins "Sporen" feels like a chastisement, a comment on our society's inability to focus. This is followed by a soft and fluid solo, the stage suffused in a candle-like glow, but after this sighing release, the work quickly builds to an impressively relentless physicality as the dancers jaggedly boomerang against the floor or slice and jab their limbs through space.

Co-directors/choreographers Andrea Leine and Harijono Roebana have acknowledged their fascination with the logic of algorithms; here this manifests itself in looping sequences that approach a hypnotic state but often just go on a bit too long. Even so, the monotony adds a compelling layer of vague unease for the viewer. Three women gyrate their pelvises, torsos undulating; the movement is neither sexual nor sensual, but chillingly mechanical. This lack of creaturely warmth informs much of "Sporen." Often the dancers don't seem to move; rather they seem moved by unseen forces. They are the opposite of disembodied: It is their bodies, not their consciousnesses, that drive them on, often mercilessly.

Although abstract on the surface - the casual beginnings and endings of phrases have the shrugginess of improvisation - a hint of humanity finally emerges, and it's surprisingly tender, given the aloof, almost hostile way the movement hurtles out of the dancers' bodies.

It happens near the end, after one woman is stunned into a frozen state, one arm outstretched, pointing, while her head is tilted crazily upward, eyes fixed in a horrible stare. Around her, facial expressions soften, and a hint of pleasure informs those rippling hips and torsos. Only connect? The lone woman, having recovered and left the stage, reenters - and in answer to the discordance of the work's opening clang, the piece ends, wonderfully, hopefully, as she runs, leaps, and hurls herself on one of the others.