Review: 'Miscellanea II' is a mixed bag — far too much of one

You expect a variety show to have variety — but you also expect it to have some sort of connecting thread, either of quality or sensibility.

The seven pieces in Manifold Motion's "Miscellanea II," alas, are far too mixed a bag. They include some striking, experimental work, but they also include pieces that are lackluster disappointments.

The good news first: "Unravelling," featuring dancer Nicole Sasala and vocalist Susan Dumett, blended startling staging with electronically looped voice to strong dramatic effect. Sasala, crouched on a pedestal in a gold dress, repeatedly engaged in upward struggle, setback, then vertical rise again — until she towered a good 8 or 9 feet high. In the meantime, Dumett, moving from low mutter to high soprano wail, built pulsing layers of sound that seemed to interlock with the demons Sasala was battling.

The program indicated the piece was "based on the dark journal entries of Florence Nightingale," but the willed effort and ultimate collapse that Sasala portrayed could have come from any myth to do with Sisyphean effort.

The one drawback: The visible preparation at the start made it clear from the get-go that Sasala was perched on something. A purer stage blackout at the beginning would have made the height she achieved before her fall all the more surprising.

"Immutable/Tensile," a duet for aerialist Bridget Gunning and double-bassist Evan Flory-Barnes, was another nice match of talents. Gunning, as a self-involved airborne creature, was so immersed in her glide-and-hang routines that she scarcely noticed the musician obliquely serenading her. Gradually, though, she grew aware of him — wobbling, at one point, to the twang of a particularly deep note he struck.

Flory-Barnes' low, jazzy pizzicato improvisations were just the ticket to make "Immutable/Tensile" work. While the two performers' interaction could use further refining and precision — maybe even a little more comedy — this was a fine solid piece.

"Isthmus" was a video accompanied by live marimba music (a transcription of a work by Hildegard von Bingen, deftly played by Memmi Ochi). It depicted two dancers in a black-and-white watery setting that grew increasingly distorted and solarized. The video effects were diminished by improper projection — but with better presentation, this could be a beguiling piece, especially when the dancers start "multiplying" and becoming ghosts of one another, all to a ghostly marimba backdrop.

Less satisfying were "Forthcoming" (instrumental doodles on synthesizers by Jeremy Bieger and Dan White) and "Tulipomania" (lithely danced by Manifold Motion artistic director Keely Isaak Meehan — but to a monologue by Linden Ontjes that needed more polish, and perhaps less feeling, in its delivery).

A harp-accompanied monologue/song by Monica Schley was prettily bland, while the evening's closer — an augmented Manifold Motion doing a 1960s go-go-girl homage — felt completely silly and out of place. True, it got a good crowd response. But for this dance lover it was a real letdown after the far more inventive and accomplished "Woolgatherer" that the company produced earlier this year.

Michael Upchurch: mupchurch@seattletimes.com