'Zaum' inventively looks behind society's facades

Last spring in a dance called "Landscaping for Privacy," choreographers Josephine and Paul Zmolek asked uncomfortable questions about what American society values. The new ballet by the Zmoleks, "Zaum: Beyond Significance," has questions about what is meaningful as well, but the answers are less implied.

"Zaum," a production of the Southeast Missouri State University Department of Theatre and Dance, premieres tonight and continues through Saturday night at the Rose Theatre.

"Zaum," a title based on a made-up language, may be like no ballet you have ever seen. Costumer Rhonda Weller-Stilson has put most of the 18 dancers in work clothes. Two marionettes (Zakiya Chandler-El and Emily Wilson) wear more traditional ballet costumes but do the herky-jerky, while the six dancers identified as the High Society Hoop Ladies (D.D. Buerkle, Clare Crouch, Gwendolyn Evans, Heidi Froemsdorf, Jennifer Hembree and Michelle Lauchner) dance like ballerinas but are dressed in fanciful creations that expose what's underneath.

Looking underneath is what "Zaum" seems all about.

As the ballet begins, the stage is bare except for some markings on the floor. The backstage area is completely exposed. The stage manager (Daniel Boughton) appears, and gradually other stage hands join him. Their movements are workmanlike in tune with the industrial sounds and atonal piano in the score by Dr. Robert Fruehwald.

It's not pretty in any traditional sense. Nobody ever set a musical in a factory. But the intense performances by the dancers and the inventiveness of all the collaborators won't let you look away. Dennis C. Seyer's set, constructed by the dancers as the piece progresses, technical director C. Kenneth Cole's lighting and the music and costumes all coalesce in a whole that engages the senses.

The 55-minute ballet is divided into 13 parts, although the transitions are seamless. One of the enlightening elements in "Zaum" is Fruehwald's use of text by artists who were part of the Cubo-Futurist movement that inspired the piece. "A painting of a machine is like a painting of a painting," says one. "He who does not forget his first love will not recognize his last," says another.

The taped vocal performers are all university professors: Fruehwald, Dr. Robert W. Dillon Jr., Dr. Sara Edgerton, Steve Hendricks and Paul Thompson.

Impressive physicality and timing are involved as Casee Hagan, wearing a flesh-colored leotard with extra padding, is passed around by the stage hands.

The other dancers in "Zaum" include Tia Bible, Lea Kiger, Jessica Morrow, Crystal Sigala, Shaqueenia Wise and Medina Glenn.

In contrast to the starkness of the beginning, the final pas de deux by the skilled Stephen Fister and Katharine M. Stricker theatrically brings romance and beauty onto the stage, and perhaps that is where the search for meaning delivers us.

sblackwell@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 182