Dance Review | Chouinard gives "Orpheus and Eurydice" a provocative twist

The evening's topic is familiar (Seattle's third staging of the "Orpheus and Eurydice" myth this fall), but the mesmerizing episodes of movement and vocalization that comprise Compagnie Marie Chouinard's Seattle premiere at On the Boards burbles with an astonishing language of energized, tormented beauty. Edited down to one act since its February premiere in Rome, "Orpheus" is a supremely unified and varied work.

It takes just 15 minutes for a male narrator, convulsing in exaggerated breaths, to present the text of the Orpheus myth in slide form, while dancers depict the doomed lovers and the angry hoards that attack them. On a glowing moonlit set, the piece then spools back and forth through the story using a series of abstract solos, duets and full-company vignettes that express tremendous feeling (if not clear meaning) about the hellish grip of these under- and outer-worlds.

Primordial and futuristic both, Chouinard's fearless tribe depicts a journey of gigantic human suffering writ delicately across their patterns of breathing, posturing and hooking up. There will be buzz over the costumes (gold short shorts and pasties for men and women both) and the array of seductive and X-rated props (hear hear for Canada's tolerance of eroticized snakes and men wearing stilettos and strap-ons). But the dancers' concentration and characterizations supersede the visual dazzle. Long after the gotcha! props are gone, the dancers continue to walk on exaggerated raised heels, exploring the air around each other's mouths, describing erotic heights and coils of muted language within their own bodies.

There's no sustained redemption here, only small outlets of freedom. When Eurydice bounds into the audience, writhing and moaning atop the rows of seats, it is both witty (the dancers onstage yell out "Don't Look Back,") and provocative (she's rendered harmless to us by her consumed state). In their single reunited moment, Eurydice balances aloft on Orpheus' legs, rotating and coursing in his arms like a huge heart pumping blood between the two of them.

American dance has nothing like Marie Chouinard. If you fed steroids to Meredith Monk and gave her funding for a resident company of circus — and ballet-trained — artists, maybe then we'd get to drink from a source this fresh. Until then, we'll wait for On the Boards to bring Chouinard back.