Dances By Tere Mathern
Lincoln Performance Hall
Portland, Oregon
October 13-15, 2000

Reviewed by Martha Ullman West

Tere Mathern and Minh Tran have a marriage of true kinetic minds to which no impediment was apparent in night, day & the golden hour, a concert of four pieces that takes its title from Mathern’s most ambitious work to date, one of them choreographed by Tran.

The show opened with Mathern dancing Optimum, a solo Tran originally created for himself that laminates highly physical Western contemporary dance technique with movement derived from Asian opera dance. Mathern uses her arms and legs the way a draftsman uses a compass, extending them in swooping circles and arcs, building the pace until the solo moved from the contemplative to the explosive, a tour de force that left the audience gasping.

A reprise of Evidence of Division, a duet Mathern created for herself and Tran that premiered in the latter’s concert last year, reveals the beauty of this partnership even more, as well as the work’s inventive detail and durability.

Theirs is a partnership that began when Tran was a student in Portland State University’s erstwhile dance department, where Mathern trained and taught before going to New York to earn a master’s degree in interdisciplinary studies from New York University. In 1997, she returned to Portland, where she has shown herself to be a major talent and player in the city’s flourishing contemporary dance community. Two premiers revealed a complex choreographic intelligence, as well as a speculative wit that at times is so subtle it managed to get past the highly informed, sophisticated Sunday afternoon audience.

Red Sonnet, performed in silence by Jae Diego, Jenn Gierada and Rhonda Summer, is packed with intelligent irony that in places makes it quite funny. Mathern’s trademark unhurried, geometric, space-eating movement is customed tailored for the three dancers – Diego’s angularity and length, Gierada’s curved sensuality, Summer’s compact energy.

Those qualities were taken to their highest power in night, day & the golden hour (in which Mathern and Tran also danced) – a work that plays with time in ways reminiscent of Marcel Proust, space reminiscent of Piet Mondrian – organized, geometric, abstract.

One gesture triggers another – an arm extends, a leg retracts – as the dancers, who seldom make physical contact, are juxtaposed on the stage in unexpected patterns, appearing and reappearing from the wings in movement that takes its own sweet time.

The accompanying score is eclectic, a taped collage that includes rather soupy music by Alfred Schnittke, appropriate for a long, sleepless night, juxtaposed with the more rhythmic beat of Loop Guru and Tranquility Bass and others, all put together by Dale Svart. PSU faculty member Bruce Keller’s lights, blue and gold in turn, are crucial to the visual impact of this lovely piece.