CriticalDance Forum

Dance chant
Deborah Abel at MIT
According to Deborah Abel, breath is the key to self-awareness and a defense against the distractions of everyday life. Abel’s The World Is Breathing, which she presented last weekend at MIT’s Kresge Auditorium, folded new and old dances into a meditative ritual. With a musical ensemble directed by Lee Perlman, the 10 dancers established an atmosphere of profound calm that if it didn’t change your life at least made you forget the cold.

Farther along in the journey, seeing ‘Relationship’ anew

Choreographer Deborah Abel - part yogic philosopher, part early modern dance devotee - has all the best intentions.

In her evening-length work “The Perfect Relationship,” a concert of six duets ... she and partner Jeffrey Polston convincingly slip under and over and through each other’s various body parts, now smooth as corn silk, now all jagged puzzle pieces, struggling to connect or to snap loose. But for a dance that’s intended as a journey, you pass too much of the same scenery from point A to point B.