David Gordon is one of those choreographers whose work I’d read about for years but never had the chance to see. He is a big deal, one of the founders of post-modern dance, one of the first to use text in his work, a pioneer of “dances” that straddled the lines between theatre, performance art and movement. What I didn’t expect was a relaxed, funny, unpretentious evening. The word charming comes to mind. The words, “great dance” don’t. Post-modern Gordon-style doesn’t only show its structure, dwell on itself in belly-gazing self-fascination , but it has a sophomoric quality that is clearly intentional. The theatrical world presented here is Shakespeare-light, a winking look at characters without anything, really, at stake. Still, the context is war. It hangs over the proceedings, shades the jokes. There is a delightful absence of abstraction and obscurity here. The genius is low-key.
