Parson met this ensemble with one of her own: an excellent cast of six women. Shechet designed the costumes — gray outfits with socks and shoes matching the hues of the sculptures, and apronlike skirts with her plan drawings printed on them. The performance happened in the golden-hour light of dusk (and will repeat Sept. 27-28).
Next to the sculptures, the dancers appeared more sculptural. As they lounged on the bases and stood gazing into the distance, their stasis converged with the implied motion of Shechet’s structures. But, as Parson did in her recent work “The Oath,” she also emphasized the ritual associations of group activity — most effectively as the women walked in procession from sculpture to sculpture, holding their aprons up. They did a five-minute dance around each work: a folklike circling and braiding, or a more obscure sign language of chopping and pointing arm motions.
The wittiest moments played with distance, such as when the performers, having slowly paraded from the first sculpture to the second and the third, suddenly sprinted down a hill to the fourth and hid themselves behind it. When viewers caught up, the dancers emerged in a formal arrangement of fainting spells, one dropping to the ground and the others picking her up. Where earlier they had leaned on the sculptures, they now leaned on one another, affectingly, head-to-head.
Around the fifth sculpture, up a curving hill from the fourth, the dancers channeled a different kind of girl group — the Shirelles or the Supremes — doing ritualized versions of 1960s social dances. A soundtrack by Tei Blow, fed through portable speakers, colored the movement as much as the setting did, its electronic manipulation of steel sounds and choral voices summoning sci-fi or supernatural associations that were distracting and limiting.
Shechet’s sculptures aren’t spaced equally. One — called “Midnight” though it is bright orange — sits far from the others at the end of a long allée, an outcast or the avant-garde. As the dancers finally headed in its direction, spectators were held back to watch them walk slowly down the path, stopping briefly to acquire metallic capes.
As they receded into the distance, their shapes merged into one, a smudge that shimmered like a mirage. You could call this a coup de théâtre, except the effect was more cinematic. Their protracted exit would have been a perfect image over which to roll the credits.
