Texas Dance Theatre Photos by Khampha Bouaphanh

"A civilized society is measured by its appreciation for the arts. In such a fast pace world and with so many conflicts putting us down, we often forget to slow down and enjoy the beauty of it all. Seeing the Texas Dance Theatre perform their season finale, it’s hard to not be inspired. While I admit I don’t know much about dance, I was easily moved by their beautiful performance." khamphaphotography.com

Texas Dance Theatre has almighty ending to season with 'Adam and Eve and God' By MANUEL MENDOZA / Special Contributor to The Dallas Morning News

FORT WORTH – Adam and Eve and God is a duet of sorts. God is represented in the new dance piece but not in the form of a dancer. Instead, the percussive squeals of avant-garde composer George Crumb's music stand in for the creator.

Texas Dance Theatre's Josie Baldree and Dan Westfield performed Adam and Eve and God on Friday as the company closed its first season.

Another creator, New York choreographer Mark Panzarino, made the piece for Texas Dance Theatre, which closed its first season Friday with the premiere and five other works at Scott Theatre.

In keeping with the Fort Worth company's orientation toward ballet, Panzarino, a former Miami City Ballet dancer, employs classical movement. But there's also a fresh, modern sensibility in the way he interprets the biblical story of original man and woman.

Adam and Eve and God opened at Friday afternoon's preview on a dark stage except for the red-lit edge of a curtain in one corner. As Crumb's harsh soundscape began to disturb the atmosphere like a warning from the almighty, a bar holding a loosely hung black curtain rose to reveal Josie Baldree and Dan Westfield bent forward.

The music's bowed screeches came and went as the pair danced together in relative innocence, Westfield clenching Baldree from behind and carrying her horizontally across his shoulders.

For the second section, balloons and balled-up paper covered the stage. Baldree started out lying at one end with her back arched, then scooted through the effluvia to get to Westfield on the other side. Westfield, as if in a panic, rapidly rubbed his head and body, pounded the ground and beat his chest.

Had Adam and Eve fallen, only to pay the price? Costumed in flesh-covered body suits, Baldree and Westfield dressed themselves in black clothing, covering their no-longer-innocent bodies. A curtain at the back of the performance space then rose to reveal a bank of candy-colored footlights. The new world might be tainted, but at least it has more shades.

Other standouts on the program included artistic director Wil McKnight's Webern Variations, particularly the lovely geometric patterns formed by the dancers at the end, and guest choreographer Elizabeth Gillaspy's Duet for Hollis Hock. Hock conveyed a contemplative consciousness. You could see that she wasn't just moving; she was thinking.

Texas Dance Theatre closes its season with a mixed bag, and saves the best for last.

By Margaret Putnam - "Why do the dancers just stand there?," complains a woman in the lobby about Mark Sean Panzarino’s Adam and Eve and God: a dance for two. "If I wanted to watch someone just stand, I’d watch my husband stand at the sink and pretend to be washing dishes."

Panzarino relayed that comment and several others he overheard during intermission at Texas Dance Theatre’s "A Season of Choreographers: Gala Finale."

He got an earful. "He’s from New York," observed another audience member. "“Maybe that’s why the music sounded like broken glass and muggings." And, "what was it with the balloons? There’s no New Year's Eve in the Bible."

That’s what you get for eavesdropping. I was outside so he didn’t hear my assessment of his messy, silly dance, to wit: "God must be laughing, or else thinking 'what have I wrought?' Can I throw them back and start afresh?"

Adam and Eve begins to screeching, ear-piercing noises. As a bar that stretches the length of the stage slowly rises, pulling up a curtain, it eventually reveals the slumped over forms of Adam (Dan Westfield) and Eve (Josie Baldree). For a while, they dance nicely enough, with Adam swirling her off the ground, and the two waltzing.

Then things get weird. The stage turns dark, and when the light comes on, it reveals crumpled paper and balloons strewn about, and Eve lying at a heap at one end, and nothing more of Adam than his legs sticking out.

Once upright, Adam jumps over the balloons, legs straight and forward, and then stops, shivering as if tormented by an itch.

And so it goes, the two looking bewildered even as they stand still, and even more bewildered at they pass balloons back and forth.

Compared to this little foray into the absurd, the rest of the program Friday night at the Scott Theater was pretty conventional, from the opening Confugium to the ending work, Webern Variations.

Emily Hunter’s Confugium featured seven dancers in purple bathing suits and diaphanous skirts. Their movement is all curves, leaps and turns. Hunter’s Dreamers is a lovely if unremarkable duet for Hunter and Westfield.

Some of the same lush, curving movement from Confugium shows up in Krista Jennings Langford’s returning away, but what makes it arresting is the deployment of dancers in space. The four dancers start out scattered, their limbs creating different viewpoints that give the effect of a breeze rustling flowers. They also dance in tandem, in trios and duets, backs arched and arms stretched out.

From the title of Elizabeth Gillaspy’s Duet you would expect two dancers. Instead, it is a single dancer (Hollis Hock) and a barre. In black leotard and pointe shoes, Hock goes through the usual ballet exercises of developpé, grand battement, rond de jambe and arabesques, but has other ideas. She folds over in half, slides to the floor and pulls herself back up. Near the end, she pulls her hand away from the barre as though it is too hot to touch, and, now free, runs off. On one level, the dance is straightforward, but on another—thanks in part to Piazzolla’s pulsating tango music—it seethes with sexual tension.

The best was saved for the last: artistic director Wil McKnight’s Webern Variations. Shades of Balanchine run through all four variations, but who is complaining? Not me. Crisp footwork, elegant arabesques and that signature Balanchine touch, rocking on bent knees, look fresh here. So does the use of space, geometric lines and repetition. Several times two sets of dancers form a diagonal in arabesque penché, and many times simply rotate at a 45-degree angle doing nothing but lifting arms. As in von Webern’s music, the simplicity is telling.

►Margaret Putnam has been writing about dance since 1980, with works published by D Magazine, The Dallas Observer, The Dallas Times Herald, The Dallas Morning News, The New York Times, Playbill, Stagebill and Dance Magazine.

Texas Dance Theatre ended its inaugural season Friday with its best work yet- Chris Shull/Fort Worth Star-Telegram

FORT WORTH -- Texas Dance Theatre ended its inaugural season Friday at the Scott Theatre with its best work yet.

Six dances paid homage to classic ballet, some with edgy twists. The emotion of the work, though, was often ambiguous. We were asked to feel for a couple or follow a narrative -- often inconclusively.

The concert -- by company choreographers and guest Mark Sean Panzarino from Miami City Ballet -- made plain the new company's vision for contemporary ballet.

Panzarino's Adam and Eve and God retold the Garden of Eden story with Dan Westfield and Josie Baldree. A pool of red light substituted for an apple; party balloons and wadded paper littered the floor to denote one heck of a morning after.

Emotion was stark; Baldree moved from supplication to terror; the pair bounced on tiptoe, as if manipulated like marionettes. Stage curtains rose, and the house lights came on as if to reveal the workings of the world; George Crumb's music shivered and shrieked.

Other dances implied the same emotional heaviness. Dreamers had lovely moments of partnering between Emily Hunter and Westfield. Lifts were airy but athletic; her gestures strong yet pliant. But the meaning eluded me -- was this couple happy or sad?

Hollis Hock had a wonderful turn in Duet by Elizabeth Gillaspy; her partner in a tango by Piazzolla was the ballet bar itself, a serious take on a dancer's dedication. In Krista Jennings Langford's Returning Away, three ballerinas challenged a fourth. Intricate patterns were interrupted by a repeated gesture -- palms up at the waist, then brought up to the face. Did it mean shame, sustenance or reverence?

Wil McKnight, Texas Dance Theatre's founder and artistic director, contributed Webern Variations. Its four movements were filled with ballet's basic positions, balance pristine and arms elegantly extended. The neoclassical music added sharpness to the movement, bodies moving in graceful, unhurried unison.