\nIn Catherine Gaudet\u2019s Ode<\/em>, a sizable group of dancers spend an hour moving rhythmically and repetitively through an abbreviated repertoire of gestures, most of the time shouting \u201clove\u201d at their audience in metronomic unison. They step-touch laterally while sliding one upturned forearm forward and then the other. They dramatically toss up their outstretched hands, swaying their torsos, or push little palmfuls of air with rigid arms. It looks almost like they\u2019re taking an aerobics class, copying the heart-pumping choreography of some instructor beyond the stage\u2019s lip.<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
The image of an aerobics class both illustrates the main formal qualities of Gaudet\u2019s piece\u200a\u2014\u200arhythm and repetition\u200a\u2014\u200aand helps to illuminate Ode<\/em>\u2019s affective disposition. Aerobics is aspirational. It provides an instructive example of the sense of \u201ccollective fantasy\u201d that Gaudet identifies as one of her choreographic interests. It evokes not only a search for physical optimization, but also the cultural and economic frenzy of its space-time of peak popularity\u200a\u2014\u200a1980s America.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ode<\/em> is not really about a health craze from a vertiginous cultural moment, but it does reproduce the enthusiastic striving aerobics. And although Gaudet\u2019s program notes emphasize the tense exigencies of harmoniously maintaining varied collective scenarios, her piece might most generatively be read as a paean to its own medium\u2019s multidirectional yearnings; Ode<\/em> exercises an emotional investment not merely in choreography but, specifically, in the format of concert dance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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