![\"Member](\"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/AJ-all-diff-151007_Sean_Curran_017.jpg\")
<\/a>Member of the Se\u00e1n Curran Company in I Dream’d a Dream<\/em>. (L to R): Dwayne Brown, Jin Ju Song-Begin, Christina Robson, Rebecca Arends, Benjamin Freedman, Aaron R. White, Elizabeth Coker, Michael Richman, David Gonsier. Photo: Yi-Chun Wu<\/p><\/div>\n As you enter the BAM Harvey to see the Se\u00e1n Curran Company\u2019s Dream\u2019d in a Dream<\/em>, you not only glimpse an embodiment of the title, you begin to enter another kingdom. Not since Peter Brooks\u2019 stunning production of the Sanscrit epic The Mahabharata<\/em> introduced New Yorkers to the tactfully renovated ruined theater in 1987, have I seen a theatrical vision so compatible with the space.<\/p>\n There is no raised stage. Almost the entire audience looks down<\/em> on the performing area just behind the old proscenium arch. Here\u2019s Curran\u2019s opening image. Hanging at the back and almost filling the allotted space is a stunning panel by Mark Randall. It\u2019s as if he has created a gigantic patterned rug made up of smaller ones of various sizes, all set to affirm horizontals or verticals. Robert Wierzel\u2019s lighting has turned the stage floor red. On six carefully placed red benches and on the ground between them, the dancers are sleeping, curled up on their sides. They all wear pillbox hats and what appear to be exotic, multicolored clothing.<\/p>\n As the nine sleepers awake and carry the benches to the sides of the area, Amanda Shafran\u2019s ingenious costume designs are revealed. The dancers wear layers of garments\u2014as European as plaids, as universal as stripes and floral patterns, and as Eastern as bloomers and embroidered vests\u2014all seeming at home together.<\/p>\n Three roseate patterns of a lighter red are cast on the floor, as if coming through circular windows. The musicians enter, bow, and take their places at the back. They might as well have come in our dreams. The six are members of the Ustatshakirt Plus Ensemble from the Kyrgyz Republic (Randall\u2019s backdrop was inspired by the felted rugs made in the nation\u2019s mountains) and are clad in festive traditional clothing and hats. Three of them (Bek Alagushov, Aizada Kasabolotova, and Adinai Kudabaeda) pluck the long-necked, three-string komuz<\/em>; Makhabat Kobogonova plays the kyl kiak<\/em>, a very small bowed instrument; the ensemble\u2019s musical director and composer, Nurlanbek Nyshanov, and Tolgonai Osmonova play a flute and the haunting, cloudy-voiced choor<\/em>. The women often sing; several times, they make jaw harps (the metallic timur komuz<\/em> or the wooden jigatch<\/em>) emit rhythmic nasal twangs. After a musical prelude introduces us to the music\u2019s rhythmic power; its strident, mountain-air sounds, and its sweet melodies, the marvelous dancers begin to dance.<\/p>\n Foreground: Aaron R. White and Christina Robson. Behind them (L to R): Jin Ju Song-Begin, Rebecca Arends, Elizabeth Coker, and Dwayne Brown. Partly visible at back: Aizada Kasabolotova (red dress), Nurlanbek Nyshanov, and Togonai Osmonova. Photo: Yi-Chun Wu<\/p><\/div>\n Had I read Curran\u2019s program note before the piece began, I wouldn\u2019t have been so astounded by its sights and sounds at thre BAM Harvey. In 2012, when his company toured Central Asia with DanceMotion USA, he and his dancers heard the Ustatshakirt Plus Ensemble in Bishkek, the Kyrgyz Republic\u2019s capital. Curran, who began his career as an Irish step dancer, immediately sensed a kinship between the Irish and Kyrgyz musical traditions.<\/p>\n The dance\u2019s title invokes a dream, and usually the concept of reverie gives choreographers permission to fly about in fantasies. Curran instead drew the name Dream\u2019d in a Dream<\/em> from a poem by Walt Whitman. Whitman was dreaming of a \u201cnew city of Friends,\u201d one in which \u201cNothing was greater than the quality of robust love.\u201d Without delving too deeply into all that Whitman may have meant by \u201crobust,\u201d I see that quality as one of the dance\u2019s greatest charms. These people dance with happy vigor as members of a community, waking to a celebration. They gather together to compete, flirt, and dance. Those not on their feet at the moment sit and watch the proceedings\u2014maybe sharing a bench with the musicians, or sitting in a temporary shelter made of piled-up benches. Sometimes various ones of them stand at the back and swing their arms around their bodies in a leisurely, marking-time way. Or they move the furniture into new configurations. During one sequence, those not dancing sit on the benches, arranged as if in a church, and jiggle as if to an inner response to the music\u2019s rhythms.<\/p>\n<\/a>