![\"Members](\"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/AJ-group-hold-Summation-Dance-15-4114.jpg\")
<\/a>Members of Summation Dance (L to to R: Devin Oshiro, Megan Wubbenhorst, Allie Lochary, Angela Curotto, and Taryn Vander Hoop) hold Sumi Clements in Clements’ At the Hour<\/em>.\u00a0 Photo: Larson Harley<\/p><\/div>\n Perhaps someone some day will write an essay about dance titles, how they vary \u2014encapsulating a theme, for instance, or borrowing from literature, or throwing spectators off the track with a word or phrase that has a secret meaning for the choreographer. Summation Dance titled its latest work At the Hour. <\/em>What strikes you first? Those raised in Catholicism may think of the \u201cHail Mary: \u201c. . .pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death.\u201d Other dance goers may follow up the ambiguous phrase with their own ideas about this important hour, while still others shrug off the title altogether.<\/p>\n Advance press material noted that choreographer Sumi Clements\u2019 inspiration came from 1960s Spain, when four young girls in the village of Garabandal famously claimed to have received visitations from the Virgin Mary or her deputy, St. Michael, prophesying catastrophes to befall sinners from on high.<\/p>\n At the <\/em>Hour, which premiered at BAM\u2019s Fishman Space in the week following Labor Day, is Summation Dance\u2019s first long (slightly under an hour) work. It celebrates the fifth anniversary of this six-woman company that appeared the same spring that its founders, Clements and Taryn Vander Hoop, graduated from New York University\u2019s Tisch School of the Arts with MFAs (I knew them back then).<\/p>\n Clements is Summation Dance\u2019s principal choreographer and co-artistic director, Vander Hoop is its executive director and co-artistic director. Talented and resolute, the two have attracted donors and forged ahead, averaging four appearances a year for the group. Welcome to the world of modern dance and postmodern dance\u2014a world in which almost every dancer has another job.<\/p>\n (L to R): Devin Oshiro, Taryn Vander Hoop, Angela Curotto, Megan Wubbenhorst, Allie Lochary, and Sumi Clements in At the Hour<\/em>. Photo: Larson Harley<\/p><\/div>\n I mention this background because Summation\u2019s dancers are not onstage wimps or idealized creatures or conceptual artists; they are tough, determined, earthy women. They do not soar into the air; they plant their feet apart and hunker down. They are not into wasting time.<\/p>\n In At the <\/em>Hour, they have no truck with glamor either. Brigitte Vosse has costumed them all in loose, sleeveless dresses that conceal the shape of their bodies, but don\u2019t hide the sweat stains that darken the fabric\u2019s muted colors. Clearly, the world these women inhabit is a dangerous one, and they inhabit it together\u2014a tribe that holds its rites together, promotes fellowship, and is disturbed by occasional conflicts and an atmosphere in peril.<\/p>\n The beginning of At the Hour <\/em>is especially striking for its use of the flexible Fishman Space. Megan Wubbenhorst is alone onstage, facing an audience banked on one side of the room. Nothing hides the armature of the building\u2019s interior; we might be inside a giant submarine. Kyle Olson\u2019s commissioned score starts of with quiet, intermittent rattling sounds and tickings. Wubbenhorst is doing something both mysterious and compelling. She seems askew in some way\u2014careful, contained, but not sure where gravity is pulling her. Glued to one spot, she leans, gazes into the space, balances in tiptoe, revolves\u2014always slowly, experimentally. Then she looks up.<\/p>\n So do we. There is a dancer on either of the empty two side balconies, standing still and watching or beginning to move slowly. During this passage, they may disappear and reappear on the opposite side, and what moves they make increase in scale and distance travelled along the narrow paths. From my vantage point, Devin Oshiro is especially vivid\u2014rushing along, spinning into deep, wide-legged squats. Then Simon Cleveland\u2019s lighting subtly but firmly draws our attention even higher. Omigod! Clements and Vander Hoop are clambering around on the heavy metal grating that lies beneath the overhead lighting equipment. I\u2019d say they\u2019re monkey-like, but they\u2019re too cautious for that. This is unfamiliar territory to them, and they don\u2019t appear to be succeeding in finding a way out (if that\u2019s their aim). Down below, Wubbenhorst continues her own explorations, and gradually she is joined by the others: Angela Curotto, Allie Lochary, Oshiro, and, soon, the two overhead explorers.<\/p>\n<\/a>