Dance: Framed in Nature

Susan Marshall’s idea of a sandbox is hardly a place for innocent child-like play. In one section of Frame Dances—her performance-installation work-in-progress having its initial showings this week—she has Kristin Hollinsworth and Joseph Poulson crammed into a 4-by-4-foot wooden frame filled with sand in which they nestle, squirm and grope like some odd prehistoric life form. For a moment they seem to be cuddling, but then more ominous overtones intrude.

Frame Dances is a very 21st-century undertaking, with an important video component and plans for digital distribution. Marshall was inspired to expand on the ideas she investigated in the fascinating, quietly moving frame dance—five dancers inside a 6-by-6-foot frame—in Cloudless, her exquisite 2006 piece composed of wry and poignant short vignettes.

“That birthed the idea of doing a whole collection of dances created not so much for the stage—the proscenium frame—but for a traditional picture frame,” the choreographer explains. Working this way certainly places limits on the choreographic options, but Marshall says, “the limitation is wonderful; I like to work with limitations.”

She spoke during a brief break at Music-Theatre Group’s new workshop and performance space in DUMBO. On the ninth floor of a converted industrial building right near the river, MTG has two vast open gallery-like spaces with very high ceilings. MTG is not only inaugurating the space with this event, but has commissioned and produced this phase of the work, which Marshall intends to continue to develop, adding to her “collection.” (A major commissioner is Montclair State University’s Kastor Center, where a later incarnation will be seen.) Marshall has been exploring several varied and unusual performance venues with her recent work. She created one for the Spiegeltent at Bard College’s Summerscape Festival last year and made a duet for Ice Theater of New York.

In addition to two existing selections that will be projected on video, this week’s Frame Dances includes a work for two men in a plastic, inflated pool filled with water, an aerial piece whose set is an open wooden cube—a more three-dimensional frame—and one, in a 6-by-6-foot enclosure, on Astroturf. The audience will move through the space to where each dance takes place, and will also have the option of watching each one as it is captured and projected live on video. Composer Peter Whitehead is creating a series of layered scores that he will perform.

“I think what interested me about the live performance aspect was that strange experience of seeing something in three dimensions live, and how different it is from the clean version that the different perspective of the camera is offering you. The camera is selecting what it shows you—only what happens in the frame. Whereas those of us sitting in the house see all the machinery surrounding the work, that is making the work possible—and that can be pretty ugly. So in a way, to me it speaks about the effort behind any achievement and the part that you don’t get to see.”

Her choice to work with elements such as water, earth, sand and air relates these pieces of her “collection” to the original frame dance in Cloudless. “It was performed on grass, and leaves were incorporated into it. That sort of set the tone for this first collection. I’m sure it will go far beyond this. But it seemed like a natural starting place.”

May 28-31, 10 Jay St. (at John St.), Brooklyn, 212-868-4444; Wed. 6:30; Thur. & Fri. 6:30 & 9:30; Sat. 3 & 6:30; Sun. 3, $15.