Companhia de Dança Deborah Colker @ The Joyce

The choreographer Deborah Colker’s Cão Sem Plumas (Dog Without Feathers) references Brazilian writer Joāo Cabral de Melo Neto’s poem of the same name and which brings attention to the people and their coexistence with the underdevelopment in the Capbaribe River region of Northeast Brazil.  The film helps to make this real and most of the action is on stage, but the film, filling the back wall, pulls attention from the dance.  The dancers move through a desperately dry riverbed, and in comparable sequences on stage bringing to life Colker’s connection to what nature gives and what is taken away.  Covered in thick mud, the gender neutral dancers, often move in unison from one idea to another, rolling and disrupting the dust likened to the dry riverbed that cover the stage.  Later, isolated body parts dart through oversized crate-like structures re-imagining a Brazilian slum underscoring the dancers’ commitment to the work.  To be sure, they and give more to the work than Colker’s movement cannon does, but with so much happening so little is delivered.  Cão Sem Plumas (Dog Without Feathers) ran at The Joyce from February 4-9.