Spellbinding 'Vested Souls'

Once in a while a dance leaves you breathless the instant it begins. That happened Friday night at the Community Education Center (CEC) with dancer/choreographer Nora Gibson's work for four dancers, Vested Souls. From the first sweep of Michael Reiley McDermott's electronic score to the last sweep of Eiren Shuman's arm, and from the first pose of Jeffrey Gunshol in third position to the last of Gibson's small ronde de jambes, this dance held me in its thrall. I don't think I took a full breath until about 50 minutes later.

Gibson, a classically trained ballet dancer, choreographs through postmodern improvisation. As this year's New Edge Resident Artists choreographer at CEC, Gibson had the luxury of many months and a home in which to create this dance. She used both time and space wisely.

The dance seemed separated into several sections marked by tempo changes in McDermott's utterly absorbing music, a CD by his group Micronesia and made just for the dance. I heard cello, electronics, found noises, even some attenuated strings.

Gibson's choreography had the crisp mathematically diagrammed concepts of Lucinda Childs and the répétitif circularity and primal simplicity of Laura Dean, but was unmistakably the product of the smart dynamo that is Gibson. She took floor-based ballet combinations and positions - assemblés, arabesques, attitudes, détournés (backward turns) - none of which were extended or elongated, but cut into tango-sharp shards and rearranged into a mosaic of unrelentingly dynamic movement, most at a brisk walking pace. Falls to the floor and horizontal flings of the body caught by another dancer were frequent.

I thought I was seeing Shuman for the first time but was reminded later that I'd seen him in Kun Yang Lin's company. All the while I'd been thinking, "This is a guy who had to have studied with Kun Yang." His hip rotation was so wide and elastic for a man, his arms and hands so exact yet fluid, I could barely watch the others.

For a big guy, Gunshol's grace and flexibility in his solo were transfixing. And Jessica Warchal-King matched Gibson in their near-mechanized duets. In a midconcert solo, Warchal-King appeared in a black bouffant skirted ribbon dress and pink pointe shoes, a postmod ballerina.

Gibson and her mates wore determined facial expressions throughout that said "vested dancers at work" in the most authoritative work in Philadelphia this year.