The Village Voice
March 17-23, 2004 - Footnotes
by Tobi Tobias

"Hummel Probes the Inexplicable Relationships We Can't Do Without"
ShannonHummel/Cora
Joyce SoHo
February 19-22

Stay, choreographed by Shannon Hummel in collaboration with her dancers, is an ambitious extended duet for two women-a small, feisty, dominant figure (Vanessa Adato) and a willowy, gentler one (Donna Costello). Repeatedly, with mounting intensity, they play out an agenda of tentative yet helplessly compelling seduction, awkwardly calibrated connection, and near-violent collapse that's apparently rooted in a terror of intimacy. This situation is central to Hummel's work. Typically, the figures of her imagination relate intensely to one another, while the hows and whys of their liaisons remain enigmatic. Here, as usual, the movement language is gratifyingly plain-strong and visceral in the center of the body, often delicate and naturalistic in the action of the hands and face. As the dance progresses, the two are drawn inextricably deeper into a folie à deux they might have anticipated, but didn't. It's almost like real life.