Daniels' sensuality ignites Danceworks debut

The Journal Sentinel staff

Brenda Daniels is like one of those art deco marble nymphets come to life: slim, long-limbed and long-lined, surprisingly sharp and strong beneath that smooth, supple surface.

Daniels, a New York dancer- choreographer, made her Milwaukee debut Friday night at Danceworks, where she will repeat her performance at 8 p.m. Saturday. It was an amazing display of virtuosity, stamina and invention, with six physically and intellectually demanding solos, three of them her own, and the premiere of a quartet made for Milwaukee dancers during a month residency at Danceworks.

Yves de Bouteiller, Amy Higgens, Michael Griffin and Betty Salamun premiered "Eight Ball" to a tape of pounding, driving, Japanese drumming. Like several of the solos, the quartet choreography somehow draws an emotionally charged even hot atmosphere from cool, clear, sharp moves and brainy forms.

The dancers barely touch each other; they interact in highly formal canons and other imitative procedures. And yet, the atmosphere crackles with sexuality. Leg 1 ends here It's partly the little black dresses on the women, and partly the little whiffs of tango and flamenco posing that spice the piece. But it's mostly the weight and focus given to every moment of the dance.

The quartet's sense of the intense moment echoed Daniels' own overwhelming presence in the solos. She's cool, she never mugs, she never instructs the audience on how to feel about a dance. And she certainly never vamps. Mostly, she's aloof, seemingly in her own world. When she does regard the audience, it's with sudden, blunt and disarming frankness.

The gripping sensuality of her dancing doesn't knock your socks off at first glance. It slowly gets under your skin. Daniels is so explicit and specific about the physicality of dancing the sinuous rippling of the torso, the slow unfurling of limbs, the razor's edge of a hand whipping through space, the measured settling of weight in a still moment, the sharp and sudden halt of momentum that her body takes on heightened weight and presence of living marble.

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