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The Honolulu Advertiser
Posted on: Tuesday, June 26, 2001

Dance Review
Tau celebrates with stylish retrospective

By Sheryl Dare

In this age of the Incredible Shrinking Arts Scene, with the performing arts usually taking the first hits from downsized subsidies and audiences, any modern dance company that has managed to survive for five years is practically a venerable institution.

So the Tau Dance Theater really had something to celebrate last weekend when it hit its fifth anniversary mark at the Hawai'i Theatre. Under the leadership of founder and artistic director Peter Rockford Espiritu, the company has reached this milestone by virtue of its inimitable pluck and passion. Espiritu has the uncanny ability to constellate around him the state's best dancers, visual artists and musicians, and to get them to contribute to a unique vision of dance that is at once fiercely down-home local even as it is cutting-edge avant garde. The potent combo that is Tau has earned the company numerous awards and a growing following.

This recent concert — dubbed "'Elima," the Hawaiian word for "five" — was as much a retrospective as it was a celebration. Each of the three pieces on the program represented either important sources or benchmark moments that helped to shape Espiritu as a dancer and choreographer.

The first piece was a reprise of "Petroglyphs," a work Espiritu created several years back that has come to exemplify Tau's signature style. Hauntingly invoked by chanter Felward Kehekili'i, eight dancers configure a series of astonishingly complex Pilobolus-like lifts and cantilevered couplings. They conjure images of ancient cave petroglyphs that literally come to life. Slow and mesmeric, the look is both timelessly shamanic and sleekly contemporary.

"Aureole," the 1962 masterpiece by choreographer Paul Taylor, came next. Lovingly recreated by Tau's associate artistic director, Rachel Berman (a longtime veteran with Taylor's company), "Aureole" is one of the glories of the modern dance tradition that Espiritu has grounded himself in. Famously joyful, with its exuberantly sweeping arms, sashaying strides and bounding leaps, the piece seems deceptively simple to stage, all frolic and swagger, but the Taylor style is hard to replicate. For it to look just right, the dancers need to feel space in a particular way, with a kind of abandon and volumetric embrace, particularly with the arms and upper body.

At the Sunday matinee performance, the Tau company dancers appeared cheerful enough, but the abandon wasn't quite there. Aside from the incomparably radiant Berman, Espiritu came closest to the Taylor look: during his solo, one felt him shaping, carving and extending space in marvelous ways. Marie Takazawa also added to the energy with a coquettish solo.

The final piece on the program was "Olomana Suite," consisting of excerpts of a work by Big Island choreographer Earnest T. Morgan, with additional new choreography by Espiritu. Morgan, who died in 1992, generally was regarded as the pioneering choreographer whose fusion of modern dance and hula influenced a generation of local dancemakers, Espiritu among them. This performance of "Olomana Suite," set to Olomana's soaring music, was as fresh and appealing as when it was first danced over a decade ago. Lyrical, visually pleasing, and infused with the authentic spirit of hula, this work reminds one of just how visionary Morgan was for his time, and of how profoundly he is missed. That Espiritu has added to this seminal work so seamlessly and generously prompts us to treasure this innovative choreographer right now for all of his prodigious gifts. Berman, Ricardo Peralta, Esther Izuo, Malia Yamamoto and Ka'ohi Yojo were noteworthy among a whole ensemble that rose to the occasion for this poignant finale.

Sheryl Dare, a Honolulu writer and teacher, served as The Advertiser's dance critic for some years; she stepped in in the absence of dance critic Ana Paula Hûfling, who is out of the country.