Diavolo dancers take leaps of faith on the stage

By Derek Paiva
Advertiser Entertainment Writer

Diavolo Dance Theatre's dancers-actors-gymnasts engage in risk-taking movements in which members leap, spin, fall off and hang on to a variety of props, with a huge reliance on teamwork and trust. Diavolo Dance Theatre 8 p.m. today and Saturday $30 general, $25 students, military, seniors; reserved tickets an additional $5 Leeward Community College Theatre 455-0385 Also: There will be a post-show Q&A session with the performers on both evenings.

"In this country, I think dance sometimes scares people away," said Heim, founder and artistic director of Los Angeles-based Diavolo Dance Theatre — his accent as wonderfully French as an afternoon stroll along the Champs-Elysée. "Sometimes, it's very self-indulgent. So personal, sometimes, that it's sort of like masturbation on stage."

Heim paused to take a long, cool sip from a dewy glass of iced tea before staring into his inquisitor's eyes to complete his thought.

"I DIDN'T want to do that," explained Heim, firmly. "I knew that if people came, they'd be taking a night out of their week to see it. And I wanted to do work that was FOR the audience!"

Make no mistake, Diavolo is still all about dance. The company's pieces come replete with hidden metaphors and themes — in this case, ruminations on relationships, survival and the absurdities of life — that tend to excite modern dance fans as much as they confound those otherwise more at home watching NASCAR.

But Diavolo is also about risk-taking acrobatics. More specifically, acrobatics that require the company's collection of dancer-actor-gymnasts to leap, spin, fall off and hang on to a variety of props and structures, with an overwhelming reliance on teamwork and trust.

On the heels of enthusiastically received performances at the Maui Arts & Cultural Center last weekend, Heim's Diavolo Dance Theatre takes the stage at Leeward Community College for a couple of evening shows today and tomorrow.

A Paris native (and incidentally, the grandson and namesake of the inventor of the bikini), Heim, 37, founded Diavolo in 1992 just after graduating from the California Institute of Arts. A theater major looking to start up his own dance company, Heim imagined a troupe that would combine both disciplines with his fascination for other types of movement such as acrobatics and gymnastics.

"I also always knew that I was going to have props and structures, because I was always fascinated and influenced by these as well," Heim said cheerily.

Diavolo dancers design their oft-times fearless performances around — and consequently, on — everything from chairs and staircases to custom-made structures like a giant wall of steel pegs and a two-ton rocking dance floor. The company's dance pieces are created for existing structures provided to Diavolo by various sculptors and architects, not the other way around.

"Themes present themselves after several days of playing on the structures," said Diavolo associate artistic director Meegan Godfrey. "It happens in the moment. A structure comes in and we all kind of stand there and look it with an open plate. You play with it, and the structure forces you to move in a certain way."

Said Heim, "A common theme that comes back over and over is a theme of survival. And that's because what happens is the pieces are more about how these 10 people interact and react with one another. It's about them dealing with the problem they have to resolve onstage with the structure."

Dancers also rely on teamwork, discipline and timing to avoid the often very real physical peril that comes with performing on the structures.

The two-ton dance floor piece "Trajectoire" requires Diavolo dancers to "gracefully" throw themselves on, leap off of and slide all over a structure rocking violently from side to side. "D2R1" requires performers to cavort on a vertical wall of metal projectiles.

"To show trust, you have to cross the line of danger," Godfrey said.

And Heim admitted that the obvious lure of these dangerous feats is what initially draws mainstream audiences to his take on modern dance. What winds up moving audiences to standing ovations, however, is something altogether different.

"The work we do is OK. It's not the best work you will see," said Heim, leaning back and running a hand through his shaggy, shoulder-length salt-and-pepper hair. The applause "is all about our group. It's quite amazing seeing this group of people ... doing things on stage that require them to really work with each other and trust each other.

"Actually, you end up standing for that."