Dance - The sound of motion

Imagine an enchanted land where dervish volcanoes groan Gregorian chants, steel birds thunder in a drum-filled sky and raindrops fall on welded trees with polyphonic leaves of resonant slate. In this acid-trip realm called “Volcano,” koshares — zebra-striped Hopi clown spirits — conjure the rhythmic interplay of heartbeats and pulsars, the ebb and flow of breath and ocean tides, the serenades of the seasons and the fractal rasp of desert sand.

“We were trying to explore [the rhythms] of our being here — the ones that the planet has and the ones that we have — and how every now and again they land on the same beat,” says Leah Mann, co-founder and choreographer of Lelavision, a category-defying collaborative that combines dance, mime, sculpture and music in a form they call, variously, “physical music” and “kinesis.” Sharing the stage with bizarre sculptural instruments built by co-founder Ela Lamblin, Lelavision creates music out of motion, each gesture releasing a note or a beat from stone, steel and strings.

Lelavision’s Rhythm of the Landscape, continuing this week at 7 Stages, explores the cycles of bodies mortal, environmental and celestial as found in a preternatural playground where every tree, cloud and rainbow knows a song.

“Volcano” combines the techniques of steel drums, cellos and dulcimers in a whirling welded merry-go-round, with the performers playing both on and inside the instrument while creating a series of kinetic body sculptures. In “Singing Stones,” river rocks hang from lengths of nearly invisible piano wire that the performers rub with rosin gloves, seeming to coax harp notes out of the air itself. “Bungee Drumming,” the finale, sends aerial dancers leaping into a sky filled with drums, gongs and cymbals.

You expect a heady concept show like this to be intellectually stimulating ... and it is. What surprises is how outrageously entertaining it is. Lelavision’s primitive, pre-verbal humor tickles a place that knows nothing of age or irony. The trio — Mann, Lamblin and dancer Sheli Potmesil — performs like three hyperactive kids set loose in a sorceress’ forest domain, discovering the musical miracles around them with an exuberant and often hilarious delight.


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Lelavision presents Rhythm of the Landscape at 7 Stages through Dec. 7. 1105 Euclid Ave. Thurs.-Fri. 8 p.m.; Sat. 2 and 8 p.m.; Sun. 5 p.m. $10-$20. 404-523-7647. www.7stages.org.??