![\"Melissa](\"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/AJ-sculpt-KB@Abrons-0088.jpg\")
<\/a>Melissa Toogood (on floor), Marc Mann (L), and Dylan Crossman in Kimberly Bartosik’s Ecsteriority 4 (Part 2)<\/em>. Photo: Ryutaro Mishima<\/p><\/div>\n Kimberly Bartosik, Dylan Crossman, and Melissa Toogood all danced in Merce Cunningham\u2019s company\u2014Bartosik for nine years a few decades ago, Crossman and Toogood in the company that was finally disbanded in 2011. What perhaps should not surprise us is the emotional resonance and implications of drama that imbue the works that Bartosik and Crossman premiered on their shared program at Abrons Art Center (part of a series, Travelogues, curated by Laurie Uprichard), and which affect all the works by Bartosik that I\u2019ve seen. After the three had lived through so many years of being warned that (despite some evidence) no stories were being told in a Cunningham dance and that the movement was the meaning, any urges toward narrative must have huddled in each one\u2019s subconscious like a ticking time bomb.<\/p>\n Yet one part of their heritage is ineradicable. Crossman and Toogood, who have recently been performing for an amazing number of choreographers, drive their minds and bodies into fully engaging with each moment, without \u201cperforming\u201d and without embellishment\u2014giving neither too much nor too little. I used to think that when a really fine Cunningham dancer raised an arm, his or her entire being was in that arm. Cunningham was not among the many choreographers that Marc Mann has worked with, but he also has that intentness of focus, a quality crucial to Bartosik\u2019s new Ecsteriority 4, Part 2, a trio for Crossman, Toogood, and him.<\/p>\n Bartosik has always made the performance space an active contributor to her choreography. The Experimental Theater at Abrons is not what I\u2019d call a friendly space. It\u2019s a long, narrow, tomblike room with a high ceiling, a black marley floor, and walls made of rough-surfaced beige tiles. It perfectly suits Crossman\u2019s Bound, which opened the program. While the small audience crams into chairs on risers that are set along the narrow end of the space, Crossman is already in place, seated on a long-legged metal stool. He is enmeshed in a web created by five white ropes. One is attached to a band around his right arm; another is affixed to his left ankle. Three bright blue pulleys are sewn to the back of his black jacket. The other ends of the ropes stretch to pulleys high up on the walls or to lower points (Hubert Lafore designed this element of the solo).<\/p>\n Dylan Crossman in his solo, Bound<\/em>. Photo: Ryutaro Mishima<\/p><\/div>\n It\u2019s not clear whether this prisoner (or experimenter) has a fixed goal or a problem to solve. He twists within the ropes several times in exactly the same way, but also occasionally runs a hand carefully along one, as if assessing its strength. And liking its feel. He reaches an arm high, then drops whatever idea he might have had. He pulls against the ropes\u2019 tension. He dances imaginatively within the snare (almost too wonderfully, I thought, a couple of times when his moves seemed less deeply rooted in his purposes).<\/p>\n Maybe the solo is symbolic of a dancer\u2019s work. He is bound by traditions and the techniques he has acquired. How to use them, own them, discard them? A dull roar predominates in Jesse Stiles\u2019s sound design. Carrie Woods\u2019 lighting\u2014harsh white at first, warmer later\u2014employs one extremely eerie effect. Those of us seated in the front row (and maybe also further back) suddenly discover that the programs in our laps are fluorescing. Imagine the puzzlement. (I discover\u2014whew!\u2014a couple of ultra violet light above us and wonder if my bones could start melting. Every single one of Crossman\u2019s toes is bandaged; they\u2019ll light up too, if he ventures close enough).<\/p>\n Dylan Crossman, enmeshed, in his Bound<\/em>. Photo: Ryutaro Mishima<\/p><\/div>\n As you might imagine, Crossman\u2014a marvelous dancer\u2014 draws us into his small, taut world. He slips the rope off his arm, removes his jacket; now only one leg is bound. Then he frees that. Then he re-attaches the rope to his arm. Thinks. Removes it again. Silence. But he\u2019s not wholly free; he dances energetically, with his hands behind his back, then sits on the floor and looks at us. He feels his way into an avenue between two attached ropes and thrashes along it. What is he up to?<\/p>\n When he detaches an end of one rope, a pulley sucks it up. And then a second is released. Is he through? He begins to repeat a short phrase of dancing over and over, bending, jumping, turning. The lights begin to dim slowly, slowly. He\u2019s still going over the phrase when darkness falls.<\/p>\n (L to R): Dylan Crossman, Melissa Toogood, and Marc Mann in Kimberly Bartosik’s Ecsteriority 4 (Part 2)<\/em>. Photo: Ryutaro Mishima<\/p><\/div>\n A pause separates Bound <\/em>from Bartosik\u2019s Ecsteriority 4, Part 2. <\/em>After a few minutes, Toogood enters through one of the room\u2019s two doors and climbs up the aisle to the top, still arranging a wide piece of black elastic fabric around her wrist; when Mann enters, she fixes his wrapping\u2014like a trainer readying a prizefighter. (Bartosik likes it that most of us have to turn around to see this.) Then the main door opens as if by magic, and Crossman\u2014dried off and cleaned up\u2014enters. The door closes, as if of its own accord, and the piece begins with the furor of a Pandora\u2019s box being opened.<\/p>\n The three dancers walk, then race toward the wood-paneled end wall and slam into it. Bang! End-of-the-world aural effects erupt from the speakers (sound design by Bartosik, with excerpts from Animals Collective, Untitled<\/em>). You hear what could be voices shrieking amid the roar. As if the wall were a powerful magnet, an adversary, the dancers twist erratically, slapping it with a hand, kicking it with a foot, but always pressed against it in some way. Until they break loose. Mann runs in circles. Crossman joins him, more or less shoulder to shoulder, then returns to the wall. Toogood runs to Mann. One image sticks in my memory: Toogood, on tiptoe, presses her back against one of the side walls; slightly instable, intent on the space and the men, she\u2019s also consulting herself.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/a><\/a>