By Sarah Kaufman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, September 22, 2007

Culture clash has never looked so good -- or moved so well. With its unremitting sea of motion, Margaret Jenkins's "A Slipping Glimpse," inspired by the San Francisco-based choreographer's trips to India, evoked the extreme sensory overload travelers to that country invariably marvel over. But this 90-minute "glimpse," which opened Thursday at the University of Maryland's Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, went beyond the metaphorical: Jenkins's dancers were joined by four members of India's Tanusree Shankar Dance Company -- a fruitful pairing that lifted the work above the sum of its parts.

Jenkins, who founded her Margaret Jenkins Dance Company nearly 40 years ago after performing with Viola Farber and Twyla Tharp, is a free-spirited doyenne and veteran experimenter. Her works tumble forth with unbound energy -- lots of ideas, lots of images, and movement with a distinct organic look, as if her dancers were making it up on the spot. (They're not, of course.) Hers would seem to be a difficult style to mesh with anyone other than those practiced in her deceptively loose but physically taxing way of moving. The marvel of "A Slipping Glimpse" was that Jenkins's spacey rush hour and the Indian dancers' pastoral serenity looked made for each other. Yet, with all the layering going on, one longed for a clear direction.

The piece began outside, on a grassy slope behind the center. In the soft light just before sunset, the scene took on a dreamy quality. The dancers even seemed to be wearing pajamas, though once they finished what looked like a slow-motion tai chi warm-up and filed past us into the theater, it was clear their costumes were more elaborate. They had a vaguely Indian look: silky trousers and long, filmy tunics, light as insect wings. Birds swarmed overhead. Techno music droned from speakers, sounding like lovesick tin tomcats.

This al fresco prelude set up the highly charged atmosphere inside the Kay Theatre, where blood-red platforms dotted the stage. Composer Paul Dresher (playing an enormous stringed "quadrachord" of his own invention) and members of his ensemble (on percussion and an especially mesmerizing cello) were elevated above the stage. Some audience members were seated onstage, around the periphery; others were in the orchestra section. With dancers occasionally performing on a couple of raised platforms in the rear of the orchestra, one had to crane one's head in different directions no matter where one sat.

This created a sense of being swallowed up in images, and for the most part that worked. The Jenkins dancers moved like warm caramel and sustained a level of creamy energy that seemed virtually inhuman. As they grouped and regrouped, shooting into one another's grip or cantilevering themselves off other body parts like animate architecture, it was the Indian dancers who caught the eye. In the midst of all the activity, the radiant composure of this smaller group felt like an oasis.

As their director, Tanusree Shankar, explained in a post-performance talk, they weren't performing any one style of classical Indian dance, but a more contemporary blend that retains some shapes of tradition. The Jenkins dancers had more of the familiar modern dance look about them; given a choice between them, one's eyes were drawn to the spaciousness and melting softness of the Shankar dancers. It is a great credit to Jenkins that her concept was large and generous enough to make room for both.

Overall, though, "A Slipping Glimpse" felt too long. It crested and seemed to end a few times before finally fizzling to an anticlimactic close. The length didn't add much to what had come before; Jenkins's remarkable vision -- her ability to present conflicting scenes simultaneously and create a deeply textured portrait of humanity -- was established early on. The piece developed as an accumulation of encounters, but it was too unemphatic, lacking distinct guideposts to alert the viewer to the key emotional beats. In its very unevenness, it became too even. One longed for a change of tone, a leavening of the impact. Glimpses can tantalize, but eventually one craves a better view.

A Slipping Glimpse repeats at 3 p.m. today.