Points of Departure: A Concert of Early Works and Premieres, a Li Chiao-Ping Dance presentation at the Margaret H’Doubler Performance Space on campus last weekend, proves yet again that Li, a UW dance prof, is one of the country’s most interesting second-wave postmodern choreographers.
The evening was bookended by works set to experimental composer Steve Reich’s three-movement suite Different Trains, dark poems to World War II. Both pieces worked well with Li’s new company (only Robin Baartman returns this season). The first, “Points of Departure,” a Madison premiere choregraphed in 1990, took its cues from the Trains suite’s first two movements, “America â?? Before the War” and “Europe â?? During the War.” As the sound images of the dome-car Zephyrs that linked the U.S. coast-to-coast in the 1940s and ’50s gave way to the death trains of Europe, the choreography evoked a jig, train crossing signals, then flailing and horror. The dancers were in shoulder-stands at the end, legs crossed overhead like swastikas.