Moving Earth & Heaven

Liz Lerman's Troupe And Heavy Machinery Both Show Catlike Grace

Do bulldozers dream of grace? Roused from their customary Sunday slumber, two compact Bobcats twirled with well-oiled ease for a crowd outside the National Building Museum, accompanying dancers from the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange and Bowen McCauley Dance in a frisky 12-minute ballet dubbed "Pas de Dirt."

No actual dirt was used in the creation of this performance, nor were any structures, curbs, trees, shrubs, etc., harmed. (One of the seven dancers, however, fearing that G Street's bumpy asphalt might not do her bones any favors, allowed afterward as how she might "feel it in the morning.") It was simply wry fun, a chance for the machinery to strut its struts and the dancers to don hard hats and show they're no hothouse-flower dainties.

The street was cordoned off with caution tape for the event, part of Street Scenes: Projects for DC (an effort to put art in unexpected places). The Bobcats idled expectantly -- one might even say restlessly --as the recorded strains of the waltz from Act 2 of "Swan Lake" began. The dancers wore jeans and sneakers; the women added stylized tutus made of PVC tubing and ribbons, which bobbed like hula hoops as they leaped.

The Bobcats were mostly relegated to the rear, but like ambitious members of any corps de ballet, they didn't hide back there. In fact, the little diesel divas stole the show, rumbling forward as the music crested, lifting their buckets in a slow port de bras and then, with a nimble flick of steel, pouring out lilies onto the crosswalk. How sweet!

Their surprises were not over: Backing up (beep, beep), and with practiced sleight-of-bucket, they then revealed a pair of intrepid dancers within their maws dangling in daring arabesques.

Is beauty in the eye of the beholder, or is it a trick of the lighting? Framed by yellow tape, moving to Tchaikovsky, the machines were transformed. They spun, reversed, came to a stop and posed, with the pink and sweaty dancers clinging to their metal joints. After the performance, their drivers, Johnnie Oliver and Melvin Nelson, emerged with wide smiles and doffed their caps at the applause.

"Every moment in your life is a dance moment," called out Dance Exchange Producing Artistic Director Peter DiMuro to the crowd, as children clambered down the grassy slope to get nearer to the big machines, now silent hulks once more.