From myb@ams.org Thu Oct 19 17:50:33 2000 Date: Thu, 19 Oct 2000 13:39:27 -0400 (EDT) From: myb@ams.org To: tony@math.sunysb.edu Subject: NYTimes.com Article: 'Strange Attractors': Controlled Chaos Theory, Via Superheroes This article from NYTimes.com has been sent to you by Mike Breen myb@ams.org. Tony Phillips Tony, I thought I'd skip the photocopying and faxing stages of our communication in this case. There are also some other articles (from other sources) that I will send you. It might be a while since I'm about to go to the sectional meeting in San Francisco. Mike Mike Breen myb@ams.org /-------------------- advertisement -----------------------\ Sign up for NYTimes.com's Campaign Countdown E-mail With the presidential election around the corner, we are offering a daily campaign e-mail to bring you latest developments in the race for the White House. Our Campaign Countdown e-mail will include information on the candidates' daily activities, the latest campaign news, the most important poll results and more. http://email.nytimes.com/email/email.jsp#campaign?eta4 \----------------------------------------------------------/ 'Strange Attractors': Controlled Chaos Theory, Via Superheroes http://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/19/arts/19PETR.html October 19, 2000 DANCE REVIEW By JENNIFER DUNNING Stephen Petronio has long been one of the brainiest and hippest of New York's modern-dance choreographers. The combination can be fatal, and Mr. Petronio has sometimes succumbed to mere cheekiness over the 15 years he has worked with his own company. But his new "Strange Attractors," performed on Tuesday night at the Joyce Theater, glows with maturity and a surprising grandeur. "Strange Attractors" begins with a tangy, slightly nightmarish prelude. It continues with a first part that is lushly romantic like its score by Michael Nyman and put together with subtle, exquisite precision. The second and last formal section peters out a little, in part because the choreography cannot quite hold its own with the world reflected in the large metal discs hanging over the dancers. Eight dancers stand in a line at the front of the darkish stage in "Prelude," danced to music by Placebo. Crumpling against one another's bodies and the floor and then rising in a slow continuum of motion, they look physically and spiritually maimed, an impression reinforced by the stylishly bunched black rags they wear, designed by Imitation of Christ. From these first moments Mr. Petronio establishes the simultaneous anarchy and control of "Strange Attractors." There is clearly nothing arbitrary about this feckless-looking lineup. When a man hurtles out onto the stage in the first moments of the next section, one understands that these cramped and needy- looking specimens are superheroes, a description that also fits Mr. Petronio's extraordinary dancers. And he has given the dancers choreography that pulls and pushes them through space without robbing them of their crucial individualism and authority. The title "Strange Attractors" comes from chaos theory and its probing of how apparently random behavior can occur in a world governed by deterministic laws. Program notes define a strange attractor as "a moving and magnetic focal point in a seemingly chaotic field." Mr. Petronio has found the perfect analogy for his own approach to choreography. The protean empty space between ranks and ensembles of dancers seems the closest thing to a focal point in the first section, drawing and pushing out dancers as it shifts about. They swoop across the stage, the men's stop-on-a-dime precision contrasting pleasurably with the women's wonderful look of rangy awkwardness. Embedded in the flow are solos and several duets that are strong and interesting enough to stand alone. Another part of that flow is the way the dancers walk or stride purposefully off the stage, an effect that makes for a dramatic but integral close to the first section. Mr. Petronio works with a reduced movement vocabulary in the next section, danced to gently pummeling music by James Lavelle and Richard File. His dancers might be playful boxers, feinting through intricately worked patterns and staging. A motif of a bowed head, hands joined at the end of curved, drooping arms, is introduced gradually and makes for an ending that is again dramatically effective yet a seamless part of the dance. The dancers move here beneath two discs whose surfaces contain quite another reading of the world below. Reflected lights travel like rivers through what appear to be dark voids. Spots of color suggest parameters for those voids, through which dance tiny upside-down pale- colored human beings. Designed by the sculptor Anish Kapoor, the set is lushly seductive in a way that the dancing does not match and probably was not intended to. Greedily, one wishes that Mr. Petronio had figured out how to make them one. "Strange Attractors" was performed, with impressive physical commitment and abandon, by Michael Badger, Ana Gonzalez, Gino Grenek, Kristina Isabelle, Ashleigh Leite, Malcolm Low, Gabrielle Malone and Jimena Paz, with Mr. Petronio joining them in "Prelude." Ken Tabachnick's lighting, simultaneously stark and rich, was choreography in itself. The sleek costumes for the two long sections were designed by Ghost. The program will be repeated through Sunday afternoon at the Joyce (175 Eighth Avenue, at 19th Street, in Chelsea).   The New York Times on the Web http://www.nytimes.com /-----------------------------------------------------------------\ Visit NYTimes.com for complete access to the most authoritative news coverage on the Web, updated throughout the day. Become a member today! It's free! http://www.nytimes.com?eta \-----------------------------------------------------------------/ HOW TO ADVERTISE --------------------------------- For information on advertising in e-mail newsletters or other creative advertising opportunities with The New York Times on the Web, please contact Alyson Racer at alyson@nytimes.com or visit our online media kit at http://www.nytimes.com/adinfo For general information about NYTimes.com, write to help@nytimes.com. Copyright 2000 The New York Times Company