DK in a new place: Old-time courtship and rivalry like you wouldn't believe, but Ichabod did

The crickets and the fog and the young men of Tarry Town moseying about: like most spooky tales, "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" needs just a few signposts of nocturnal mystery to set the appropriate mood, with credit going to the design expertise of Laura E. Glover (lighting) and Mike Lamirand (sound), among others.

The version that Dance Kaleidoscope has mounted to start its season adapts Washington Irving's story for a narrative that doesn't need the early American author's flowery language to plunge to the essence of a Tarry Town schoolmaster's credulousness and the insufficiency of his wooing as the linked triggers of his eventual disappearance.  

Guest choreographer Joshua L. Peugh has also been in residence to

Zay of DK as bewitched schoolmaster Ichabod Crane

direct the show, which runs through Oct. 11 at McGowan Hall. On Sunday, DK member Zay gave a fascinating performance as Ichabod Crane, an ambitious, doomed teacher, portrayed as gangly and awkward by Irving, but not in this masterly danced version. 

Crane is a man popular and well-known in Sleepy Hollow, as the New York town is nicknamed, though he's subject to pranks and borderline bullying from the rowdy young men and their leader, romantic rival Abraham "Bram Bones" Van Brunt (Ryan Galloway). The schoolmaster has repetitious bad dreams and transitory moments of joy and social inclusion: Brandon Carson's electronically versatile score includes for the social-dancing choreography the era's hornpipes and reels, which the troupe executes with zest, of course. 

The rivals seek the affections of Katrina Van Tassel, a lively rich girl under the watchful eye of her father (Nathan Rommel, in one of three roles), a wealthy farmer with an estate that overlooks "the lordly Hudson," as the poet Paul Goodman indelibly called it. Whenever Katrina (Julie Russel) was onstage — whether partnered with Bram Bones or Ichabod, or among the Tarry Town womenfolk — she was the picture of desirable youth and the target of Ichabod's chaste, social-climbing passion. 

Bram's interest seems not so pure, and he's motivated mainly by the desire to humiliate the schoolmaster. Galloway plays him well as "having a mingled air of fun and arrogance," in Irving's phrase. Stirring up his rival's habitual interest in demons and witchcraft, specifically the threat of the Headless Horseman, is the way to go. It certainly is a situation staged to stunning effect in Peugh's scenario, which involves mayhem in the production's seasonally apt manner and the extraordinary puppet mastery of Nickolas Peugh.

The background of the successful colonial uprising against the Mother Country has achieved a distinctive presence in community lore: the rampaging horseman is said to have been a Hessian mercenary whose head was carried off by a cannonball. 

The Woman in White haunts Sleepy Hollow.

The new republic's 13-star flag is unfurled a few times as a reminder of the War of Independence. But military misadventures are not required to generate the region's ghost stories, so Peugh has nicely given pride of place to the ghostly Woman in White (Savannah Rolfe) in symbolic appearances at the beginning and end of the show.

The audience is continually invited to believe that the real world of the early 19th-century Hudson River Valley is saturated with Ichabod Crane's folklore-fed imaginings. Envisioning his story in dance terms (without words but punctuated by shouts) is an enthralling way to represent provincial superstition and an oddball's blocked drive toward happiness, especially when carried out with this production's artistic integrity and flair.

[Photos by Sonja Clark, Moonbug Photography]