Sean Curran to headline an eclectic evening of dance

By Eric McHenry

Long before Sean Curran joined the cast of Stomp, Boston was his stomping ground. Born to Irish-American immigrants in nearby Belmont, the acclaimed performer and choreographer got his start as an Irish step-dancing prodigy.

He's come a long way since then, logging 10 years as a principal dancer with the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company, another 4 with Stomp, a heavily percussive music and dance extravaganza, and 5 with his own, widely admired Sean Curran Company. He'll return to the Hub April 1 for the second in a pair of Dance Collective performances. Staged in the Tsai Performance Center and cosponsored by BU's department of physical education, recreation, and dance (PERD), Sean Curran Drops In is the result of a long-standing association among Curran, Dance Collective, and the University.

"Sean is wonderful at presenting personal themes in a way that makes them feel universal," says Micki Taylor-Pinney, dance coordinator for PERD and artistic codirector of Dance Collective, who in 1995 brought Curran to BU for a weeklong artist's residency. "I think that's a real indication of a talented choreographer and dancer."

Micki Taylor-Pinney (left), Sun Ho Kim, and Ann Brown Allen perform in "Shout," a work by Dawn Kramer that will be featured in a pair of upcoming performances by Dance Collective. Photo by Pete Wishnok

Curran will perform two original solos in the April show, "Hegel's Vacation" and "Average Tragedy." The latter gestures both to Curran's distant and recent past, intermingling references to his Irish ancestry, his personal history, and the sense of desolation he felt just a few years ago when, in the grip of alcoholism, he left the Jones/Zane dance company.

"I wanted to make a dance about the past," Curran told Dance magazine in January 1999, "so I made 'Average Tragedy,' my door dance. I thought about the metaphor of a door. It comes from an Irish thing. In the olden days, Irish houses were built right on the dirt or cement. To do Irish step dancing, you'd need a wooden surface for your tap shoes. They would actually take the door off the hinges and put it on the floor, and you could do your step dancing on the door. So I thought, I'll make a dance with a door, a symbol of the past. I carry a door around in the dance. I thought, I'll literally put Bill [Jones] back there, in my mind, behind the door."

Curran's style is distinctive and heterogeneous, joining modern dance and improvisation with more traditional elements.

"There's a classicism in his movement vocabulary," says Taylor-Pinney, "but there's a theatricality in the way he uses gestures and in the way he tells the story."

The Curran solos will get quite a different treatment in the first of the two Dance Collective shows. Heather Waldon, a principal dancer and rehearsal director for the Sean Curran Company, will perform them on March 31. Waldon, who danced for several years with the Boston Ballet, brings an uncommon grace and precision to her interpretations of "Hegel's Vacation" and "Average Tragedy."

"It's very interesting to see her do his work," says Taylor-Pinney. "Sean has a uniquely expressive torso and face, but he'd be the first to tell you he could never have danced with the Boston Ballet. In Heather you can really see that ballet training. She's got exquisite line, as they say in dance. Sean's training and background are more eclectic."

Such variety will animate the entire program, which includes choreography and performances by Taylor-Pinney, Dawn Kramer, artistic codirector, and Sun Ho Kim, artistic associate. Kramer's "Swan Song #1" spotlights a 15-year-old Boston Arts Academy student performing a hip-hop-inflected dance to the music of Bartók. Kim's "Night Before the Storm" has both strictly choreographed and improvised parts. And in "Mirror, Mirror," a pair of dancers dramatizes Taylor-Pinney's friendship with a former student who suffers from body image problems and an eating disorder.

The young woman, whose struggle is ongoing, helped Taylor-Pinney put the piece together. She provided passages from her diaries and a copy of "Love After Love," a poem by CAS Creative Writing Professor Derek Walcott that begins: "The time will come / When, with elation / You will greet yourself arriving / At your own door, in your own mirror / And each will smile at the other's welcome, / And say, sit here. Eat. / You will love again the stranger who was your self." The former student also served as an informal consultant on the piece.

"She came in and watched rehearsals and gave me input," Taylor-Pinney says, "and her comments were very helpful. She talked about how it made her feel, and I guess I could say I felt gratified by her reaction. She said it made her think about her situation in a different way, which of course is our highest hope for any art that we create."

Sean Curran Drops In, performances by Dance Collective, will take place at 8 p.m. on Friday, March 31, and Saturday, April 1, in the Tsai Performance Center, 685 Commonwealth Ave. Tickets are $18 and $15, and $10 for students, seniors, and Boston Dance Alliance members. For more information, call the Tsai Performance Center box office at 353-8724.