Turning to the next chapter of contemporary dance here, DK opens up a New Horizon

When those of us scolded for sedentary lifestyles get up and decide to do something about it, there's nothing like going outside and bringing a new horizon into view. No screen! The freshness of a previously unknown or generally ignored landscape, even surveyed with binoculars, lingers on unfamiliar objects and scenes, teasing us with distance, yet also welcoming our scrutiny.

"New Horizon" is a predictable title for the first Dance Kaleidoscope program under the direction of Joshua Blake Carter. But as seen on opening night Thursday at Indiana Repertory Theatre, the show is stuffed with aspects of newness there's little chance of figuring out immediately. And that's stimulating.

The comic Steven Wright said he was writing a story about a photographer who went crazy trying to get a close-up of the horizon. I will avoid pursuing such a close-up in words here, and I appreciate Wright's quirky wisdom. 

We may well be entering a continuation of DK's excellence, but on a totally different footing from the one Indianapolis dance fans have embraced over the 32 years of David Hochoy's artistic direction. In her curtain speech before the show, executive director Kim Gutfreund announced a new title for Hochoy: artistic director emeritus. Well, of course. 

Julie Russel in "Mothertongue"

"New Horizon" comprises three Carter works originally for other companies, plus one world premiere. The earliest piece, "Mothertongue," uses a rattling, multitracked piece by Nico Muhly, full of voiced numbers. For dancers, numbers are the lingua franca of coherence, essential in both initial training and full-fledged public performance. Dancers have to get that close-up of each horizon set before them by the choreography. They don't go crazy; they get settled in a universe of controlled energy, emotional investment, and well-honed technique. They recognize the terrain because they have helped to shape it.

Lined up before the audience at first, the DK dancers in "Mothertongue," which was commissioned by Ballet Nouveau Colorado and premiered in 2009, gradually pry individual gestures out of the initial tableau. Partnerships emerge, and juxtapositions of slow and fast movement are continual. Solos burst and fade. The dancers briefly mimic a hand-to-mouth existence — in one moment, startlingly, hand-in-mouth. One dancer, Paige Robinson in this production, moves into and out of isolation. A questioning of syntax and significance seems to be demonstrated and eventually resolved. But the "happy ending," if that's what it is, isn't overstated. The language has been learned and becomes the common property of the community.

One of many indelible, quickly etched looks of "Edge of the Sky."

The new piece, "Edge of the Sky," amounts to an updating of Carter's art, registered upon dancers new to him that he is charged with leading into an indefinite and hopefully rewarding future. Using a dozen dancers, this piece makes an assertive statement about group unity. That's the foundation, personalized and given ensemble thrust, for a stunning exhibition of the choreographer's style. 

Individual movements suddenly incorporate something else. Balletic twirls emerge out of thin air; arms can be spread in graceful arcs or drawn in reflexively.  You never know how a jump and lift, female to male, is going to end; the grip may be around the woman's middle. The horizontal is thus posed as a counterargument to the vertical, which is so much of the exhilaration of dance. There's sometimes an element of the spasmodic that seems less an interruption of the flow than a way of adorning it.

The great jazz critic Whitney Balliett memorably labeled jazz "the sound of surprise." Carter's

Adrian Dominguez and Marie Kuhns in "You + Me."

choreography bears the look of surprise. That's evident in his 2015 setting for Chicago's Giordano II titled "You + Me" after the performers of a song that drums into the listener that "this is no ordinary love." And, of course, this is no ordinary pas de deux. It's surprising, even if it's close to literal in representing the song. Performed on opening night by Adrian Dominguez and Marie Kuhns, "You + Me" embodies romantic passion.  The cling-and-fling partnering I noticed in Carter's introduction to Indianapolis in August threads its way through this piece, along with what I might label climb-and-collapse movements both working against and yielding to gravity.

The program's second act brings to the local audience "Kim," Carter's 2017 tribute to his mother and by extension, a multi-part work that "celebrates all those who've had to find the strength to begin again." The musical settings vary widely, allowing for various kinds of support for the expansive choreography. 

The costume concept is also Carter's, with men and women alike clad in formal wear to begin with. It's the look of propriety itself, holding something in that perhaps wants release. That release is performed when the jackets are discarded in a pile. They will later be picked up and removed from the spotlight; only the solo dancer takes the option of leaving a jacket behind.

The first interlude, an amusing trip through the song "I Am Going Slowly Crazy" by Dr. Jean Feldman  makes light of desperation while the gestures hint at underlying violence and a wish to push the burden onto someone else, which featured dancers Marie Kuhns and Paige Robinson do.

The humor is quickly given serious perspective by Holly Harkins in her solo. Along with  Robinson, she seems the troupe's most capable of projecting emotional impact with facial expressions. "A Losing Game," performed to "Autumn Leaves" as sung by Nat King Cole, represents the woman's abandonment. At length when the ensemble returns, there's a more spread-out trip through "I Am Going Slowly Crazy." The message of healing the hurt places eventually triumphs. 

The pathos in this work puts the range of such responses in vivid human terms. That does not make "Kim" superior to the program's other works; it just helps display Carter's choreographic range. In the program's first half, it was as if human experiences were recast as the movements and gestures of some alternative life form. What may have struck the eye as "non-dance" is appropriated for dance purposes, and there's no reason why receptive audiences won't be grateful for that new horizon to be accessible to them. The show continues through Sunday.

[Photos by Lora Olive]

.