This weekend, I felt the thrill of dance again.

DanceWorks 2003 brought back memories of me decked out in the pink, sequined spandex and high-heeled tap shoes that served as the hallmark of my dancing years.

But one solid difference remained between my days as a dancer and Syracuse University’s DanceWorks performance this weekend. None of my former dance teachers would have let a dancer go on stage looking like some of the performers did at Friday night’s show.

When my roommate suggested we check out the performance, primarily because of the rave reviews we heard last year, I agreed, anticipating a professionally done, exotic and energizing evening of dance. Instead what I found was a recreation of a juvenile dance recital, complete with the hooting calls of an immature audience.

Maybe I set my expectations too high, especially after we waited for a half-hour before the show in a line that looped into little-explored depths of the Schine Student Center.

With few exceptions, the first act was littered with sloppy choreography and careless dancing. In nearly every number, at least one person moved out of sync with the rest of the group, proving both distracting and annoying.

Overall, the dancers prowled the stage in listless motion, their arms and legs seemingly flailing about with no direction or definition of movement.

The choreographers overused clich formations and moves throughout the entire show, indicating their lacking creativity.

By the end of the night, I thought I would never shake the recurring image of dancers rotating around a stage-wide circle, which I witnessed ad nauseam all evening. The unending series of individual dancers leaping and turning across the stage served no purpose other than a brief intermission for audience members to consult with their neighbor about where to get a bite to eat after the show.

But an altogether slipshod show was not without a few gleaming moments. Prince’s ‘Slave,” choreographed by Dennis Padula, who won the “Pop Idol” contest at the New York State Fair last fall, essentially saved the first act. After an embarrassing performance to Bette Midler’s ‘Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy,’ (which, by the way, is also quite clich) it was refreshing to see Padula’s sexy approach.

Not only were his dancers, brace yourself — in sync — his choreography engaged the audience in a way that only truly inspired dance can.

While at some points of the show I found myself longing once again for my days on the stage, the dancers in ‘Dance TV’ reminded me of why I could not cut it in the field. Their energy and advanced movements, not to mention flexibility and obvious focus, proved what it means to have a calling.

Both the dancing and the choreography of the second act proved much stronger than that of the first. I was pleasantly surprised that the students managed to salvage some otherwise awful dance music (I never cared for Nine Inch Nails’ ‘Closer’) with clean and original movement.

This act also presented a diversified variety of genres, including exotic belly dancing and a sensuous tango. But DanceWorks should have stopped there, and not gone in over its head with their awful rendition of Riverdance.

As the dancers proved in the first act, the DanceWorks cast lacked the precision of movement to pull off such a number. Step dancers spend years training in this very specialized genre to reach the level of skill necessary to pull off Riverdance. DanceWorks’ rendition seemed to be a cheap rip-off of the real thing.

The final act of the show was ‘Angels,’ a tribute to Nicholas Del Pozo, a former active member in DanceWorks who died in September. The dancers in this piece projected a truly mystical expression resulting in a spectacular execution of the number. They proved to be the masters of their movement. The show started with a performance to Janet Jackson’s ‘Together Again’ with images of Del Pozo fading in and out of a backdrop.

These two tributes to Del Pozo were perhaps the two strongest performances of the night. The dancers seemed to have a greater command of their movements and a greater sense of purpose behind their expression. It showed.

But to say DanceWorks was a failure is far from true. These few gleaming performances made the show worthwhile, proving that dance continues to change and adapt with modern attitudes. It was hopeful enough that I would probably attend another performance by the group.

Just maybe next time I’ll bring my own tap shoes.

Tiffany Lankes is a senior newspaper and policy studies major. E-mail her at [email protected].

Published on February 23, 2003 at 12:00 pm