Dancing Out Our Inner Demons @ Hyperallergic
Pontus Lidberg Dance, “Snow” (photo by Daniel Robinson)
For dancers, the body is a surrogate for concepts and a tool for arranging shapes in the air. One increment of success for a dancer is the mastery of the body in the negotiation of space. Another comes when the understanding of motion is expanded to include the bodies of other dancers or telescoped to focus on even smaller increments.
The two pieces presented in the Pontus Lidberg Dance program that ran June 6–7 at the Joyce Theater were developed separately by Lidberg, but the ideas and motifs explored in “Written on Water” act as a kind of primer for the main work, “Snow.” In both, the individual performers forego their autonomy in space, dancing in an interconnected way that visually articulates the relationships and emotions that bind and motivate us.