Dead Can Dance

Antonio Caido was just walking down the boardwalk one day when he fell into a hole and died. That’s the premise behind the new dance-theater piece by Brazilian-born and New York-based choreographers Rosane Chamecki and Andrea Lerner.

It’s not a new thing for choreographers — or playwrights, painters, performance artists, screenwriters or musicians, for that matter — to assail weighty philosophical issues such as the meanings of life, death, destiny, religion and human helplessness. What’s rare is life-and-death art that doesn’t make you want to run screaming from the room. But the Chamecki/Lerner Dance Company’s Antonio Caido is straightforward without being obvious, sad without being sappy, and thoughtful without taking itself too seriously. (Have you heard the one about the guy who really wanted to know if he was going to heaven?)

The 55-minute multimedia piece begins with the dancers’ lamenting the insignificant circumstances that led up to Antonio’s death: What if Julio hadn’t gone to the bathroom? What if Antonio hadn’t stopped to buy cigarettes? Antonio Caido’s centerpiece is a small, 3-D square of brightly lit water, an encapsulation of the abyss, a fish tank. Throughout the work, the dancers balance on its thin railing, stand in its knee-high water and alternately try to help and hurt each other by pushing heads in and whipping them out again in huge, audience-drenching arcs.

The dancing is a sometimes tender and sometimes terrifying horizontal jumble of heads, arms and hands, performed not only on the stage floor but also on tables, benches and a high platform near the ceiling. Chamecki and Lerner’s choreography is so inspired by contact improvisation that it seems somewhat limited by the constant need for another person to induce a dancer’s action. A few solos provide welcome relief from all the jostling; one particularly intense variation has a woman jerking, thrashing and shaking her head “no” to the unrelenting din of machines.

But ultimately the leaning, scrambling, tugging and pulling of contact improv works for Antonio Caido. These images tell the story of one man who fell through a hole and, in many ways, took his friends with him.

— Lauren Kern

Chamecki/Lerner Dance Company performs Antonio Caido Friday and Saturday, April 9 and 10, at 8 p.m. at DiverseWorks, 1117 East Freeway, (713)228-0914. $15; $10, students and seniors; $8, members.