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<\/a>(L to R): Cilla Olsen, Robert Malmborg, Erik Nyberg and lutenist Jonas Nordberg in Kenneth Kvarnstr\u00f6m’s TAPE<\/em>. Photo: Yi-Chun Wu<\/p><\/div>\n Eighteen years have passed since I first saw Kenneth Kvarnstr\u00f6m\u2019s choreography. That was at a rehearsal in his native Finland. Thirteen years ago, I viewed his beautiful Fragile<\/em> at Jacob\u2019s Pillow. So I can\u2019t speak knowledgeably about his style, but I do see connections between Fragile<\/em> and TAPE<\/em>, which K. Kvarnstr\u00f6m & Co. brought to BAM Fisher this past week. (TAPE <\/em>premiered last year in Sweden, where the choreographer is the artistic director of dance at Kulturhuset City Theatre in Stockholm).<\/p>\n Both pieces present the dancers as members of a community. In TAPE<\/em>, the six occasionally talk quietly among themselves, as well as intermittently taking turns at a standing microphone to make a point about the choreography, the music, or their private lives. They may slip away from one activity to join another already in progress. Whether dancing or sitting on the sidelines, they\u2019re very aware of one another.<\/p>\n There\u2019s no narrative in TAPE<\/em>, and its beguiling encounters and tasks appear in musical space as well as stage space. The brilliant lutenist Jonas Nordberg prepares us by playing motifs on his instrument and explaining each and how they relate. The pieces that he plays over the course of the performance is (with the exception Francis Poulenc) by composers of the Baroque Era: Silvius Leopold Weiss, Robert De Vis\u00e9e, and Johann Sebastian Bach. Nordberag also exchanges the lute for a theorbo, its hyper-long stem looming above him, and for a guitar. So the music is lovely, peaceable, and very intricate in terms of the dance that the musician\u2019s fingers execute. He\u2019s not immobile either. Although he has a stylized stump to sit on, he prowls around and into the dancing, on one occasion pushing himself and his instrument intrusively, if benevolently, close to a company member.<\/p>\n These are exceptionally fluent dancers; occasionally they have the look of a person trying to find his\/her way into a complicated garment (slip an arm into a sleeve here, pull the bottom edge up with the other hand, and squirm to ease the head through the appropriate opening), yet the overall impression is of bodies twisting and sliding and ducking through unseen pockets of air. In TAPE,<\/em> Robert Malborg conveys that remarkably in a slippery solo. So does P\u00ebr Andersson.<\/p>\n Erik Nyberg and Sophie Augot of K. Kvarnstr\u00f6m & Co. in TAPE<\/em>. Photo: Yi-Chun Wu<\/p><\/div>\n Kvarnstr\u00f6m avoids aerial choreography in TAPE<\/em>, although the dancers at times lift one another (Andersson holds Sophie Augot overhead stretched straight as a board for a surprisingly long time). These people are grounded\u2014their knees often bent, their feet wide apart; they\u2019re at home on the floor. Their torsos are extremely flexible; in one thematic move, a dancer bends far to the side, his\/her arms reaching out horizontal to the ground. However, they make small, busy gestures with their arms and hands (tricky things with crossing wrists, for imstance) as well as sweeping ones. They crook their arms and set their pointed elbows stirring air; they swoop a curved arm overhead as if calling \u201ccome, follow me!\u201d to a distant friend.<\/p>\n At times, I image Kvarnstr\u00f6m educating both himself and us in the complexities that lurk within flow and to the ways in which themes interlace and transform. The dancers transform too. Astrid Olsson initially costumes five of them in white trousers and jackets smudged with gray and black and the sixth (Andersson) in a black suit. Over the course of the dance, they all gradually change into black and, at some point flip a black upper garment into something loose and full. Malborg performs his solo in a bulky white top that looks as if a jacket had been deconstructed and re-sewn into something very strange. Andersson at one point wears a black one just like it.<\/p>\n About the title. It refers to the black tape that is laid on the white floor; some is in place when the work begins; dancers unroll tape and create other designs. None of these is curved, and the small overlapping squares and rectangles that result make the performing area of the black-box BAM Fisher resemble the court for a game whose rules we don\u2019t know. A dancer may work within a large framed space, a pair of silver shoes be stashed in a small one.<\/p>\n<\/a>