Study in Symmetry

Many have wondered, since the days of the revolutionary postmodern Judson Church movement in 1970s New York, if there is any truly new ground to be broken in the realm of dance and performance. If there is, San Francisco's Jess Curtis/Gravity may be holding the pickax. Curtis' most recent Symmetry Project takes the weight-sharing principles of contact improvisation to startling new levels. Two naked, interconnected dancers merge and differentiate in accordance with structured improvisational music that limits them to symmetrical movements. The result, in his words, is "a kind of über-intimacy" that goes "far beyond sexuality into a kind of communal biology." The latest in a series of studies that have led Curtis and duet partner Maria Francesca Scaroni through a performance circuit of open-air festivals, art galleries, theaters, and the Internet, Symmetry Study #7 heartily embodies Gravity's mission to create "very live performance." Also on the bill at "Intercontinental Collaborations 3 — The Symmetry Project" is Asymmetrical Tendencies, a collaboration with Croi Glan Integrated Dance Company from Cork, Ireland.
March 30-April 6, 8 p.m., 2008