Dance review: 'Heaven' is a place where sound, movement meld

Performance review |

"Heaven," David Byrne once sang, "is a place where nothing ever happens."

That's not true of Minneapolis choreographer Morgan Thorson's "Heaven" — although the things that happen in it happen awfully slowly at first.

Thorson's "Heaven" is better described as ritual-movement theater than dance. It goes for trance-inducing pattern and sound, and only after the trance has been induced does Thorson delve into restless realms that ask for dance prowess from certain members of her company.

As the audience enters the theater, nine performers, all in white, are already tracing the perimeters of a brightly lit stage in a measured procession. They do it once, twice, three times, four. Their expressions are neutral, their pace unvarying. The only sound is the amplified rumble of an electric fan.

Gradually the rigid pattern breaks down. The fan's rumble is replaced with a single sustained note on a harmonium. That note becomes a cluster of notes enhanced by an echoing, electronically refracted vocal line. Some dancers break away into rhythms of their own. Others move at their original pace, somehow divining a metronome beat in the minimalist timbres.

This musical score — melody reduced to its barest essence — is the work of Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker, of the Duluth band Low. But there's no separation between movement and song in "Heaven." The singers move; the movers sing.

The satisfaction of the piece stems from the atmosphere it creates and the intensity of its staging: the gender-blind costuming, the spare yet shimmery visual design, the initially subtle and later dramatic changes in lighting (collectively the work of Lenore Doxsee, Emmett Ramstad and Thorson).

The quality of the movement is slightly less impressive. There are some terrific dancers in Thorson's troupe — notably Tristan Koepke and Max Wirsing, who sharply execute the springy yet almost ascetic paces Thorson puts them through. Others clearly have less training or capability.

Thorson gives each what he or she can handle. She's as attentive to the voicework in the piece as the movement, carefully calibrating the way that murmurs and whispers can rise into song or even a shouted hymn.

As for the idea of "heaven" she's conveying, it seems to be a place that's sometimes stark, sometimes brilliant in the way it glistens. Some dancers literally slam against its walls, while others scrabble around its floors. For one, it's a moving spotlight that can't be caught.

In the end, Thorson's heaven is a sung vision, delivered robustly and forthrightly, with each performer facing the audience under a light as bright as an unveiling.