Dance - Moving Messiah

CORE puts Handel in a new context

During a holiday season with enough Nutcracker ballets to drive one bonkers, the second coming of CORE Performance Company’s Messiah is a spiritual experience.

The modern dance interpretation of Handel’s choral masterwork has seen changes since it debuted last year. Choreographer Sue Schroeder reduced the number of dancers from 10 to eight to accommodate the space limitations at 14th Street Playhouse’s main stage. As a work in progress, sections have been altered or added. But what hasn’t changed is the work’s strength and substance, heightened by an insistence on originality. It brings a new appeal to the seasonally popular score, pared down to a manageable hour-long program.

Those expecting an enactment of Messiah’s textual oratorio will be disappointed. Instead, Schroeder worked with the dancers to create movements based on the sound of the language, not the content. This technique, drawn from the way Handel crafted the original score, means we see as well as hear the phrasing of the music. Dancers represent voices, and movement phrases concur with chorale sections. Anytime the text appears, so does the corresponding movement.

The result is artistically sound and choreographically strong. Lyrical movement is rife with point and counterpoint. Baroque spins and long lines (drawn with patterns of fall and recovery) characterize some sections. Sometimes, gravity pulls the dancers earthward, exemplified by a men’s trio section in which the three assist one another in a struggle to reach some unseen height.

Finally, when the dancers move en masse on the diagonal, we see them as individuals who share a common path. Their gestures become our gestures. Despite the conformity of the movement, we’re struck by their individualism — and our own.

At the root of the performance is mankind’s struggle to live one’s beliefs; it’s a struggle we all share, no matter our faith. Our ability to create hope, peace and love in the face of that struggle is written in the movements of this Messiah.

And that’s a message for any season.

Several Dancers Core presents CORE Performance Company’s production of Handel’s Messiah Nov. 23-25 and Dec. 2 at 14th Street Playhouse, 173 14th St. Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m. $15-$12. 404-373-4154. www.severaldancerscore.org. or e-mail sdcinfo@mindspring.com??