Dance Review: CORE Performance Company’s The Point

CORE kicks off 25th year in Atlanta with free performances

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  • Mark Teague
  • Claire Molla and Blake Dalton perform in “The Point.”

CORE Performance Company began its 25th season in Atlanta with a series of free performances in the surprisingly smart and professional Performing Arts Center of Decatur High School, on Saturday and Sunday, September 17-18. The program consisted of two new pieces: The Point and The Moment Between, both of which utilized the entire company of five dancers (three men, two women) and were choreographed by CORE’s founder and artistic director Sue Schroeder, the second piece created in collaboration with choreographer and former CORE dancer Jhon R. Stronks.

The simplicity of the visual elements of The Point—crisp, clean, almost anonymously plain street clothes, the bare stage lit sparely in white light—belied the complexity and detail of the movement. Dancers started in five separate and isolated positions around the stage facing the audience, totally still, but slowly, individually, they began to succumb to spasmodic, reflexive impulses to move, impulses which eventually evolved into a more constant, almost baroque, even frenetic traffic of dancers across the stage. The look was elegant and spare, like a blank canvas slowly becoming busy with very thin lines (the piece was, in fact, inspired by Sol LeWitt’s famous instructions for wall drawings). The patterns and points of intersection were intricate and constantly shifting. Though there was frequent stopping and lots of stillness interwoven within all the motion, there was nothing sluggish or awkward or fitful: it was impressive that there were no moments that seemed purely transitional. The stillness was poised, and movements were rounded, measured, graceful.