Wrapped Like a Chrysalis, Dancers Emerge From Bondage to Freedom

Meandering through a demarcated section of the St. Mark's sanctuary, Gina Gibney's Unbounded featured six women, wearing layered scraps of white fabric (costumes by Naoko Nagata), alternately flying through powerful, off-balance turns and curling, small and vulnerable, into passive positions on the floor. In one particularly gorgeous section, the dancers took turns carrying one another. They moved through space like strangely organic machines; as one pair slowly passed the audience, they appeared to suspend both weight and time. But these were highlights of an ultimately flat work. Gibney attempted to create a metaphor for the emergence from bondage to freedom by having her dancers remove, section by section, pieces of white fabric wrapped around four poles: an apt structural interpretation of the concept. But the work lacked textural development, using a nondescript soundtrack of atmospheric clicks and hums. Most moving were Kristy Kuhn's sorrowful black eyes, but even they wore the same expression the whole time.