Susan Marshall

Susan Marshall was hailed as the major dance discovery of the Los Angeles Festival in 1987, but her troupe, which is based in New York, hasn't visited the Southland in two years--and won't make its Orange County debut until Thursday. At the Irvine Barclay, as part of the theater's Feet First contemporary dance series, the eight-member company will dance Marshall's "Contenders," created in 1990 and later revised, and her most recent work, "Fields of View."

There's more than arms to "Arms," the dance created in 1984 that served as a prelude to the West Coast premiere of Susan Marshall's "Cloudless" on Friday at the Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts. And, of course, there were clouds in "Cloudless." The lesson is that the 2000 MacArthur Fellowship choreographer is a trickster who has her postmodern cake and eats it too. She delivered emotionally powerful dramatic vignettes and then undercut them almost immediately.

Using everyday movement to get inside feelings and relationships, Susan Marshall creates intricately crafted dance structures that evoke the spiritual dimension of contemporary life. At the Irvine Barclay Theatre on Thursday, her fine, eight-member company provided another look at "Contenders" (previously seen on PBS in 1991 and at UCLA a year later) along with the more recent "Fields of View."

Choreographer Susan Marshall's mid-'80s dance "Kin" included an odd motion: a dancer curled her hand into an awkward knot to knock into her partner's forehead. The movement is repeated by Paul and Lise, the adolescent siblings of "Les Enfants Terribles," a dance-opera Marshall created with composer Philip Glass last year.

Choreographer Susan Marshall's mid-'80s dance "Kin" included an odd motion: a dancer curled her hand into an awkward knot to knock into her partner's forehead. The movement is repeated by Paul and Lise, the adolescent siblings of "Les Enfants Terribles," a dance-opera Marshall created with composer Philip Glass last year.

Using everyday movement to get inside feelings and relationships, Susan Marshall creates intricately crafted dance structures that evoke the spiritual dimension of contemporary life. At the Irvine Barclay Theatre on Thursday, her fine, eight-member company provided another look at "Contenders" (previously seen on PBS in 1991 and at UCLA a year later) along with the more recent "Fields of View."

Modern-dance choreographers from Alwin Nikolais to Lula Washington have created pieces about the dancer-as-athlete, but Susan Marshall takes a broader view of the subject. In "Contenders," which had its Los Angeles premiere Friday as part of a four-part Marshall program in Royce Hall, UCLA, this 33-year-old, New-York based artist shows life itself as a contact sport. Against net walls and under stadium lights, her company lines up, waiting for the gun.

Onstage at the UC Riverside campus theater, a man in white robes walks forward, making sweeping gestures of benediction. Suddenly, someone lifts him from behind and attacks him with a single, deadly stabbing/chopping motion. He falls. A woman nearby screams. This action-pattern repeats, relentlessly, world without end, until one of the onlookers finally intervenes to stop it. But it cannot be stopped. Intervention only adds another victim to the cycle of violence.

Out of the purity and rigor of postmodern structuralism, Susan Marshall's generation of American choreographers has shaped a new expressive style--one based on looking deeply at our culture for those prevalent patterns of action that reveal hidden personal or social priorities.

There's more than arms to "Arms," the dance created in 1984 that served as a prelude to the West Coast premiere of Susan Marshall's "Cloudless" on Friday at the Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts. And, of course, there were clouds in "Cloudless." The lesson is that the 2000 MacArthur Fellowship choreographer is a trickster who has her postmodern cake and eats it too. She delivered emotionally powerful dramatic vignettes and then undercut them almost immediately.

Using everyday movement to get inside feelings and relationships, Susan Marshall creates intricately crafted dance structures that evoke the spiritual dimension of contemporary life. At the Irvine Barclay Theatre on Thursday, her fine, eight-member company provided another look at "Contenders" (previously seen on PBS in 1991 and at UCLA a year later) along with the more recent "Fields of View."

Using everyday movement to get inside feelings and relationships, Susan Marshall creates intricately crafted dance structures that evoke the spiritual dimension of contemporary life. At the Irvine Barclay Theatre on Thursday, her fine, eight-member company provided another look at "Contenders" (previously seen on PBS in 1991 and at UCLA a year later) along with the more recent "Fields of View."

Susan Marshall was hailed as the major dance discovery of the Los Angeles Festival in 1987, but her troupe, which is based in New York, hasn't visited the Southland in two years--and won't make its Orange County debut until Thursday. At the Irvine Barclay, as part of the theater's Feet First contemporary dance series, the eight-member company will dance Marshall's "Contenders," created in 1990 and later revised, and her most recent work, "Fields of View."

Modern-dance choreographers from Alwin Nikolais to Lula Washington have created pieces about the dancer-as-athlete, but Susan Marshall takes a broader view of the subject. In "Contenders," which had its Los Angeles premiere Friday as part of a four-part Marshall program in Royce Hall, UCLA, this 33-year-old, New-York based artist shows life itself as a contact sport. Against net walls and under stadium lights, her company lines up, waiting for the gun.

The body of Susan Alamo, wife of fugitive cult leader Tony Alamo, was taken from a mausoleum on the cult's compound in Arkansas after federal marshals had seized the property to satisfy a legal judgment, authorities said Tuesday. During the weekend, marshals discovered that the small, granite mausoleum containing Alamo's remains had been broken into and the casket removed, according to Crawford County Sheriff Bill Grill.

Onstage at the UC Riverside campus theater, a man in white robes walks forward, making sweeping gestures of benediction. Suddenly, someone lifts him from behind and attacks him with a single, deadly stabbing/chopping motion. He falls. A woman nearby screams. This action-pattern repeats, relentlessly, world without end, until one of the onlookers finally intervenes to stop it. But it cannot be stopped. Intervention only adds another victim to the cycle of violence.

The body of Susan Alamo, wife of fugitive cult leader Tony Alamo, was taken from a mausoleum on the cult's compound in Arkansas after federal marshals had seized the property to satisfy a legal judgment, authorities said Tuesday. During the weekend, marshals discovered that the small, granite mausoleum containing Alamo's remains had been broken into and the casket removed, according to Crawford County Sheriff Bill Grill.

Out of the purity and rigor of postmodern structuralism, Susan Marshall's generation of American choreographers has shaped a new expressive style--one based on looking deeply at our culture for those prevalent patterns of action that reveal hidden personal or social priorities.