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Review/Dance; Waiting Impatiently for the Train to Chaos

By JENNIFER DUNNING, Special to The New York Times
Published: July 5, 1990

O Vertigo Dance is a company of fast, hard movers with strong presences and that indefinable French chic, though here on the scruffy side. Or so it seemed from an appearance here by the Canadian dance company on Tuesday night at the Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival, where it performs through Saturday. At the handsome new Studio Theater - a cathedral-like structure that is at once functional and suitably rustic for this festival in the woods - was just the right place for the company's ''Broken Wings (Train d'Enfer).'' The problem was the piece itself.

''Broken Wings'' takes place in a railway station where, as the program notes put it, ''baggage in hand,'' nine people ''wait for the moment to leave, frozen between two worlds, caught between two lives.'' The setting and premise of the hourlong piece are all too familiar. And Ginette Laurin, the choreographer who founded the Montreal-based company in 1984, does not do anything new with them. She has talked of the energized body as a poetic object. But if the poetry is to make itself felt, the energy must reside in recognizable human beings and be a constantly palpable entity that is sometimes held in check.

There are few changes in dynamics in ''Broken Wings.'' The energy is high and pretty much constant. A woman stands apart at the beginning, as the others draw close, one by one, to touch or embrace her. But the contacts grow hostile. Soon men and women are running in circles slamming into each other and hurling their suitcases so often that the action seems ceaseless, despite the fact that the dancers sit, lie down or move slowly past long lines of other dancers from time to time.

One of the piece's most memorable passages occurred early, when one by one the dancers travel slowly along a line of fellow dancers, using their feet as stepping stones or being lifted straight into the air as they are handed along. Another such moment is a radiant, mysterious duet for a tall man and a short woman who move as a branching column in what looks, intriguingly, like some sign language version of a dance.

But for the most part, the energy level is high, and Miss Laurin's movement vocabulary is further limited to endless whipping turns and spurting tantrumy jumps as well as collision-lifts that look more than a little like a trademark of the French company, L'Esquisse.

And the energy is expressed by people who have few constant personal characteristics. No performer is recognizable as a single character, and Miss Laurin has created a work in which characters change from moment to moment. Sometimes, the dancers seem to be momentary angels, personifications, apparently, of an angel who program notes tell us covers over the chaos created by the denizens of the station. We never get to know any of the men or women, or sense the lives they have left behind or are going to. ''Broken Wings'' takes place in Pina Bausch territory but in a considerably less dogged and substantial way.

''Broken Wings'' is set to a dark and humming score, incorporating train sounds, composed by Gaetan Leboeuf. In the end, however, it is the performers one is drawn most to. They are Marc Boivin, Pierre-Andre Cote, Carole Courtois, Brad Denys, Scott Kemp, Mireille Leblanc, Jacqueline Lemieux, Natalie Morin and Marie-Claude Rodrigue. In a discussion with the audience that followed the performance, the dancers talked eloquently of their training, which includes gymnastics and acting, and of the profound impact ''Broken Wings'' has on its performers. They also said that the piece, which had only been performed twice, was still settling into itself. That may explain the superficial look of ''Broken Wings.'' But it is hard to imagine those suitcases every looking full.

Photo: Members of O Vertigo Dance performing ''Broken Wings.'' (Tom Brazil for The New York Times)