sarma

In the middle of his dance, "Changing Your Mind", Dan Wagoner does just that and takes us all by surprise. In the beginning, Mirjam Berns, Karen Levey, Sally Hess, and Judith Moss are strutting and kicking and jerking and bending and stamping around the stage of the Exchange Theatre. Just doing typical Wagoner movement, which is a bit like slangy Cunningham done very fast and at a feverish level of intensity. I worry about the floor getting bruised. (Sorry, Wagoner was here last week; we have to let the floor recover before we allow any more dancing.) As usual, the dancers occasionally touch each other with absentminded palsiness, as if they're mothers with 10 kids and only a second to spare for each. Come to think of it, Wagoner's dances are like busy households in which the occupants are constantly running back and forth between uncompleted chores. As usual, too, there's a lot of amiable panting and sweating. George Montgomery reads numbers from the New York Times, as he announced he would before the dance began. Later he switches to stories, chosen at random.

But one story is a plant (you realize only later). You hear "Monroe Administration" and then something about a young Indian brave and his sweetheart performing a dance before a great crowd, before committing suicide to protest a life of poverty and degradation. And suddenly Wagoner is no longer creating a spate of vigorous, happy dancing that bears no relation to Montgomery's words, he is showing us the dance behind the dance those Indians did. He has changed his mind about a lot of things. He and Emmy Devine wear tan outfits subtly fringed like buckskin. She carries a big bag. They dance to night noises. Much of the movement is non-specific -Wagoner stuff with a wary look and a reduced speed. But occasionally he stamps in a special questioning way or makes stiff ceremonious gestures. Once she lies down and makes a seat for him with her upraised feet. When he lifts her, her body looks desperate -clinging or stretching out. They dig into her bag, and a flashlight inside it makes their faces blaze; they streak each others' face with paint. Finally, they look at each other very carefully and ... well ... they die. I guess. It's very subtle. And very beautiful.

The third section is a dialogue between Wagoner and Montgomery about changing your mind. A rapid, thoughtful, complicated talk that fades with the dimming of the lights. At one point Wagoner talks about really changing your mind -exchanging it for someone else's- and wonders at what point it really will have happened. Can you retain a percentage of your own mind and still have changed? That's just part of what this dance is all about.