![\"L](\"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/AJ-all-Gauthier_2015cDuggan_30.jpg\")
<\/a>L to R: Luke Prunty, Juliano Pereira, Anna S\u00fcheyla Harms, Anneleen Dedroog, Maria Prat Balasch, Florian Lochner, and Maurus Gauthier of Gauthier Dance\/\/Dance Company Theaterhaus Stuttgart in Cayetano Soto’s Malasangre<\/em>. Photo: Christopher Duggan<\/p><\/div>\n Only nine of the fourteen members of Gauthier Dance\/\/Dance Company Theaterhaus Stuttgart were on hand when this Germany-based company made its United States debut at Jacob\u2019s Pillow this July, and only once during its program (in Cayetano Soto\u2019s (2014) Malasangre<\/em>) did more than three people appear onstage at the same time. There may be a reason for this. Although the repertory includes full-length ballets, one of the company\u2019s incarnations is Gauthier Dance Mobile, which presents dances in small spaces, such as those in youth centers, nursing homes, hospitals, et al. Gauthier Dance has only been in existence since 2007, but has become extremely popular since its founding by Eric Gauthier, then a soloist with the Stuttgart Ballet.<\/p>\n The Canadian-born Gauthier is not the ensemble\u2019s sole choreographer. The Jacob\u2019s Pillow program offered works by six others, Alexander Ekman, Alejandro Cerrudo, Po Cheng Tsai, Johan Inger, Marco Goecke, and Soto. The seven fairly brief works bled into one another with only the briefest of blackouts to separate them. The dancers also form an international group\u2014born in Spain, Italy, Brazil, Switzerland, Australia, and, yes, Germany. All of pieces are light-hearted, designed to show them off as both virtuosi and as charming, fine-looking people who like and admire each other a lot. They applaud one another during curtain calls and take their final bow of the evening with their arms around their colleagues.<\/p>\n Gauthier choreographed Ballet 101<\/em> in 2006 before founding his company, and (performed, I believe, by him) it immediately won prizes. Maurus Gauthier dances it now\u2014with skill, endurance and wit. It makes for a terrific program opener. The premise is that, goaded by a male voice that offers bits of information about the origins of ballet, he will demonstrate ballet\u2019s basic positions (more than five, since he cycles back through the centuries and Jean-Georges Noverre). But this unseen ballet master is a capricious fellow. He puts the dancer through a hundred steps\u2014some balletic, some not so much, some very strenuous\u2014with occasional warnings. #40, notes the voice, looks a lot like #25 (a split); M. Gauthier shrugs and grins at us.<\/p>\n Maurus Gauthier in Eric Gauthier’s Ballet 101<\/em>. Photo: Christopher Duggan<\/p><\/div>\n Next, the unseen boss announces that he\u2019ll call out the numbers at random. and the dancer will obey. This is, of course, a fiction, but I couldn\u2019t help wishing that each recited number preceded the desired response by a second or two seconds, rather than their occurring simultaneously. Anyway, the performer dances to beat the band. Choreographer Gauthier delivers a comic ending. After M. Gauthier explodes into a collapse and the lights go out, they come on to reveal a neat arrangement on the floor of dummy limbs and a headless torso. I guess that\u2019s what happens if you get as far as 101 moves. The dancer, smiling mischievously, exits with the torso under his arm.<\/p>\n Showy male dancing plays a big part of this program. In the second-to-last number, Goecke\u2019s I Found a Fox<\/em> (2014), Rosario Guerra dances to Kate Bush singing \u201cSuspended in Gaffa,\u201d with its repeated (hard to make out) variants of \u201cCan I Have It All Now,\u201d its driving beat, and its screamy little-girl chorus. This is a solo that requires Guerra to be both nimble and stiff, as if animated by some clockwork function of the song. He makes little, swift repeated jabs of movement, his elbows poking the air, his hands flicking and flipping it.<\/p>\n Rosario Guerra in Marco Goecke’s I Found a Fox<\/em>. Photo: Christopher Duggan<\/p><\/div>\n Cerrudo\u2019s PACOPEPEPLUTO<\/em> (another inscrutable title) is a trio for three men, created in 2011 for Hubbard Street Dance Chicago (of which Cerrudo is resident choreographer). The guys dance, wearing only tight, skin-colored dance belts, dance mostly alone, accompanied by Dean Martin singing two songs, \u201cIn the Chapel in the Moonlight\u201d and (can you believe it?) \u201cThat\u2019s Amore,\u201d and Martin impersonator Joe Scalissi delivering \u201cMemories are Made of This.\u201d Luc Prunty begins alone, protectively holding his crotch for some reason. There\u2019s nothing shy about his dancing however, and Cerrudo gives him some handsome and interesting steps to do; he\u2019s earthy\u2014sinking down to launch himself into big sweeping or rising moves\u2014and silky in a highly muscular way. Florian Lochner succeeds him, and begins by copying some of his moves, before swooping into a routine of his own. The third, Juliano Pereira rushes in for more display. The three do interweave intermittently, and all dance splendidly. There\u2019s no stopping the men and very little punctuation to the choreography. Without fanfare, they\u2019re nevertheless out to stun us, and they do.<\/p>\n Florian Lochner and Anna S\u00fcheyla Harms in Johan Inger’s Now and Now<\/em>. Photo: Christopher Duggan<\/p><\/div>\n Three items on the program are male-female duets. Inger\u2019s Now and Now<\/em>, created for the company this year, features musical selections by Arvo P\u00e4rt, Nangpa La, and Erik Enocksson. Here we get a little glimpse of the non sequiturs that are trendy in much contemporary choreography. Why should this handsome blond man (Lochner) arching under a spotlight (lighting design by Mario Daszenies) suddenly walk away from us as if he were an ape. Is he wearing black socks just so he can slide his feet? Why in her solo should Anna S\u00fcheyla Harms take big, spraddled steps, make twitchy gestures, and embark on a game of hopscotch for five seconds. Nevertheless, these two are beautiful and expressive as they spar, leaning apart, dancing swiftly and combatively around each other. For their mutual pleasure, he walks his fingers down her arm and elsewhere.<\/p>\n But Inger has a statement about gender to make and lays it out cleverly. The two start crawling over each other, unobtrusively divesting themselves of clothing as they travel to a corner under flickering light. But when they rise and pick up the scattered garments, she garbs herself in his black trousers and jacket and he puts her little black dress on. They make big crooked, agitated movements, but when he repeatedly attempts to touch her, she knocks his hands away. The duet ends with them holding each other in a ballroom stance, but on their knees. The lights go out for a second;, when they come on again, she has vanished. Maybe she melted into him?<\/p>\n<\/a><\/a><\/a>