Dance review: Pimsler effectively tackles serious themes

Stuart Pimsler is a tremendously intelligent choreographer. He envelops such tough subjects as war, human culpability and gender battles with aesthetic cloaks of desperate beauty. He does so quite literally in his new work, "Ways to Be Hold," which Stuart Pimsler Dance & Theater premiered last weekend.

In this work, large, roomy old-man-style coats were a metaphor for grasping consumerist denial amid human-inflicted atrocity.

The work was inspired, in part, by the physical possibilities of a headlock, which the dancers explored in solemn variations ranging from embracing and lifting, to standing on or tumbling over another's shoulders. Pimsler also took inspiration from video of Iraqi militants beheading U.S.-hired Iraqi security guards, which is only faintly alluded to by spoken-word artist Tiyo Siyolo.

In his riveting, incantatory performance, Siyolo intoned against those "who hold their tongues while others lose their heads," and the perils inherent in the desire "to want, to get, to have, to own, to keep," as the swaying dancers -- in billowing white costumes -- pointed their fingers and stomped their feet. As a spiritual warning, it was as effective as Pimsler's 1984 antiwar work, "Sentry," (also on the program) was physically harrowing.

Company dancer Vanessa Voskuil's "Aperture" was a new solo for co-artistic-director Suzanne Costello. The curious piece began as a portrait of drunken party behavior as Costello veered from large gestures in repeating phrases to sharp staccato movements. The work mutated into a surreal, funereal tableaux with a blowing fan, blinding lights and sand pouring from the ceiling as Costello careered around the table like a dissolute Isadora Duncan.

Comic relief was provided by "Interrogation and Aftermath," a section from "The Ends of Love," which runs this weekend. In a hilarious but pointedly disturbing reversal of traditional gender roles, the excerpt featured Costello, Voskuil and Roxane Wallace as red-bustled, high-heel-wearing, beer-swilling women. They peppered Pimsler, Cade Holmseth and Marciano Silva dos Santos with questions until the men collapsed, girl-talked each other into feeling better, and trotted offstage in the women's discarded heels.

Camille LeFevre is a Twin Cities dance critic.