Wednesday, December 9, 1998

Mathern's new dances blend craft with concept

Cerinda Survant
Special to the Oregonian


Tere Mathern's new dances resemble Victorian glass paperweights. The surface shines slick and glossy while vivid color and complex pattern gleam underneath. They're a pleasure to watch.

Mathern's Re/Member and Versus received their Portland premiere last weekend at Conduit; her concert continues Friday through Sunday. An earlier version of Re/Member premièred in Manhattan in 1995 while Mathern studied at New York University and the Laban/Bartenieff Institute of Movement Studies; the solo section of Versus premiered last June in Seattle. These performances are the first time Mathern -- long a respected Portland dancer, choreographer and teacher -- has shown work since her return last year.

Like most Portland choreographers, she is an attentive craftsman; like only a few, she operates at a sophisticated conceptual level. These dances' most satisfying moments -- and there are many -- come when the sheer sensuality of movement infuses more cerebral, structural pleasures. Mathern's work is quite capable of evoking an intellectual response, a kinesthetic response and ultimately a visceral response as well.

In Versus, a calm, sustained opening trio makes quite clear the dance's root concern -- the spiral helix. The dancers' wrists trace spiral paths through space; their torsos slowly spin and sink; a balance turns and lowers to the floor. As their pace quickens, the movement enlarges, he traces expand and the dancers describe bigger swaths across the floor.   Versus toys with the viewer's expectations: tweaking one member of the trio out of unison; using canon and abandoning it; subjecting clearly delineated movement to enough alteration and variation to keep our interest.

The trio is only rarely a trio: More often it is a duet plus solo, three discrete solos, or one solo performed in three different ways, times and places. At its most effusive Versus is even two simultaneous duets, as Mathern joins dancers Jae Diego, Bridgette Forrest and Jenn Gierada. Mathern's solo -- dance's coolest, clearest exposition of structure -- gradually slows, circles in on itself and draws to a close.

In terms of movement alone, Re/Member/ is a more complex dance. Re/Member utilizes bony, angular movement, movement that doesn't have the same automatic kinesthetic "hit" as the arcs and spirals of Versus. Diego, Dawn Joella Jackson and Mathern begin the dance with an intense focus on the movement they're performing; each watches her wrist or elbow as if measuring, analyzing, recording in a lab. Bit by bit, the texture of the movement changes: An extended limb slashing space makes the air tangible; joints spring with syncopated rhythms. Sections of discrete, careful phrases alternate with generous dance-y ones.

But because Mathern stages Re/Member more fully, it is more approachable and embracing. Painted set pieces echo the dance's structures; elaborate lighting suggests changing times and places. Rita Marquez sings an speaks over a collage of recorded music. The multi-layered narrative tells tales of sense memory and body knowledge, of dream and memory, and creates a dramatic rationale for the movement and its peaks, valleys, climax and denouement.