Source Fest Tries Some Odd Mash-Ups

A gutsy experiment is unfurling this week at the Source Festival. Through Sunday, seven interdisciplinary teams -- a burlesque artist paired with a poet, for example, and a playwright matched with a photographer -- present newly minted mash-ups, exploding the walls that might seem to separate creative disciplines.

The boldness of this strategy reflects credit on the festival's producers, headed by Jeremy Skidmore. But alas, to dare greatly is sometimes to fail greatly, and Tuesday night's performance -- the first in the interdisciplinary lineup -- brimmed with rudderless, tedious and downright aesthetically perverse moments.

To look on the bright side, one of the evening's three offerings was an elegant and winningly mysterious stylistic melange. "Other Life," a 15-minute movie by Austin Elston, Emily Gallagher and Kelly Mayfield, told a wistful love story through balletic modern dance and stylish black-and-white footage.

Choreographed by Mayfield (founder and artistic director of Contradiction Dance), the film interwove an intense, closely embracing pas de deux sequence -- Mayfield and Boris Willis, in resonant interpretations of two lovers -- with sequences evoking an elegant boudoir and (shades of "Anna Karenina" here) a 19th-century train station. Terence Nicholson's melancholy original score, with its minimalist arpeggios and yearning string sounds, gave way now and then to suspenseful footsteps and ticking clocks. With enigmatic silent-movie-style captions (along the lines of "Doubt returns!") and resonant imagery -- billowing train-station steam, faces captured in an ornate hand mirror, fleeting glimpses of subsidiary characters portrayed by other dancers -- the piece was stirring and poignantly open-ended.

By contrast, "Going Against the Flow," a suturing-together of the Washington Improv Theater and Dakshina/Daniel Phoenix Singh Dance Company, was hesitant and meandering, although it did crank out a few droll lines ("As cars grow smaller, so does the human soul") and mildly interesting visual rhymes. Four Washington Improv members, including artistic director Mark Chalfant, riffed on audience-generated topics, including vandalism and garlic, while eight dancers, including Dakshina artistic director Singh, noodled around, quietly improvising -- now stretching upward with gently sinuous arms, now lolling on the floor, now leaping up against the bare back wall.

At its best, the physicality echoed the themes of the speech: A parody of an NPR cooking show featured bodies jiggling like simmering liquids, for instance. But more often, the fusing of dance and off-the-cuff comedy seemed arbitrary, and the movement was too low-key to be interesting in itself. Moreover, the piece (showcasing colorful improvised lighting by Zach Walls) went on far, far too long. (Source Festival staff later explained that this was due to a one-time artistic miscommunication: The interdisciplinary projects are intended to be between 15 and 30 minutes.)

Also on the lineup was a baffling mishmash of a piece, created by Annie Johnstone and Diana Tokaji and cryptically titled "The Letting." The everything-but-the-kitchen-sink approach ruled here: As a film of mostly rain-drenched figures and objects (drums, a tree) played on a rear screen, dancers Johnstone and Tokaji ambled through vaguely yogalike choreography, uttering the occasional sphinxlike remark ("The letting, the letting . . . ").

Bassist David Jernigan, standing center stage, delivered some out-of-tune music, sadly overshadowing Mattias Rucht's spiffy percussion sequences. A tie-dyed fabric fluttered through the air at one point; the audience was goaded into joining a wordless chant -- and, oh, yes, one of the dancers warbled a folk song. From start to finish, this chamber-size extravaganza recalled Samuel Johnson's phrase about heterogeneous ideas yoked together by violence.

Those three works constituted the "Group D" interdisciplinary projects, continuing through today. Saturday and Sunday will bring the "Group E" slate, including Leslie Felbain, Juanita Rockwell and Chas Marsh's acting, music and movement collaboration, "What's a Little Death?"; Tiffany KB and Gwydion Suilebhan's photography-and-theater concoction, "Develop"; Lisa Pegram and Kitty Victorian's spoken-word-and-burlesque offering, "Girl in a Corset"; and the music-dance hybrid "Paint It Blue," by Stephen Clapp, Jonathan Morris and Laura Schandelmeier.

Perhaps those courageous gambles will pay off.

Source Festival Interdisciplinary Projects. Produced by Jeremy Skidmore. Associate producers, Merry Alderman, Sarah Coleman, Jessie Gallogly. Group D projects: today at 8 p.m. Group E projects: Saturday at 2 and 8 p.m.; Sunday at 2 p.m. At Source, 1835 14th St. NW. Visit http://www.sourcedc.org.