Published: September 19, 2002
It is probably impossible for any New Yorker to bring any sense of distance to watching a dance about the attack on the World Trade Center. For that reason perhaps Hernando Cortez's fascinating new ''Two Hours That Shook the World,'' performed by Cortez & Co. Contemporary/Ballet on Friday night at the Danspace Project at St. Mark's Church, felt as problematical as trying to make sense of the actual event.
Mr. Cortez alludes to the attack only obliquely, in occasional bursts of frantic circling, walking jerkily in place, quick sad glances and abstracted gestures of physical support. Blessedly, the two long panels of white material that hang from the ceiling are used for video projections of the dancers rehearsing the steps and movements being performed live below. Dancers also move in silhouette behind the panels.
Mr. Cortez has the scale exactly right in ''Two Hours,'' which is danced to music by Outcaste New Breed UK and, chillingly, to the Buffalo Springfield song ''For What It's Worth.'' The set and the space around it look immense. The eight dancers are stylized humans, with Christopher Morgan a tall robotic central figure who manages, despite falling and brief convulsions, to continue in his broken walk to nowhere. Passages of unison dancing seem to belong to another piece. But the closing device brings the focus back.
In the last moments of the piece, dancers slip one by one between the panels to the front of the stage then double back to line up on the side. The piece is over. The dancers do not reappear. Was that the equivalent of curtain-call bows? For a moment the performers are simultaneously the everyday humans who lived through Sept. 11 and the characters they play.
The cast also included Joan Chiang, Jennifer Edmonds, Liz Flynn, Francisco Graciano, Catherine Meredith, Shannon Mulcahy and Sharon Milanese. Chenault Spence's lighting is a subtle, unsentimental wash of soft whites and grays with an occasional jolt of blinding white. Edward Hillel designed the set and video, which was edited by Henry Joost.
Mr. Cortez, a longtime presence in New York dance, will soon move on to Cleveland, to direct a modern-dance company called the Repertory Project. In a parting gift, a solo he performed from Earnest T. Morgan's ''Ku'u Home O Kahalu'u,'' Mr. Cortez made extra sure he'd be missed with delicately inflected dancing that was both wry and yearning. The program was completed by ''The Man and the Echo,'' set to music by Grieg, and ''The Bang,'' to music by David Lang and Bang on a Can.
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