Connect @ Cleveland Public Theatre 10/6 Because we go to see as much concert dance as we can, and because that kind of focus takes its toll on other activities, it's unusual for us to take in an event that focuses on music, like Ryan Lott's Connect at Cleveland Public Theatre, but when we realized that Michael Medcalf's Cleveland Contemporary Dance Theatre, Bill Wade's Inlet Dance Theatre and Jennifer Lott would be showing new work at Connect, we decided to go. We were glad we did.

In keeping with its claim to be a party, central seating for Connect was a swath of tables. Bleacher seats give better sight lines, but these were all gone by the time we got there. Ten minutes into the show, just when the turntablism by DJ Doc was starting to make us wish we'd remembered our earplugs, Lott on piano and Brenden Beecy on bass played their prelude, providing a contrasting sound and decibel level.

We don't claim to be especially knowledgeable about music, but we liked all the music that we heard from both Lott and the Act III band Nautilus. As an entertainer, Lott floated our boat. As Johnny Carson presided over the Tonite Show with his skills as a comedian, so Lott the musician presided over Connect, hamming up his prelude with a piano dance that channeled Glenn Gould.

CCDT's Last Man Standing, featuring choreography by Medcalf and music by Lott, gave us our first look at CCDT's new all-male ensemble. Costumed in tight red trunks and bare torsos the 6 or so men vamped downstage toward the audience, striking casual but intense poses like fashion models channeling body builders. Once downstage the positions and movements became more the modern dance style Medcalf usually favors, but the unpredictable stops and starts of the non-unison movement made for maximum dazzle and flash. Lott's music, rumbling and crashing, did its part in maintaining excitement.

The last time we saw Jennifer Lott's choreography it was in another collaboration with her husband, this same Ryan Lott, for Food for Thought. We liked her dancing well enough then and said so but, like a lot of young dancers, she showed a lot of potential but sometimes came down on the wrong side of the fine line between being who you are and self-indulgence. The new Jennifer Lott, we believe, reflects her recent association with the never self-indulgent dancers of Ground Works Dance Theatre; large, energetic and sustained movements filled her solo in the here and now.

In another act two B-boys (NOVA and ILLUP) and an unnamed B-girl held forth while Lott, Beecy and DJ Doc manned various instruments. Both the boys could have held our attention for as long as they liked. The skinny white boy showed two of the highest flares we've ever seen. Wade's collaboration with Lott titled This is Gonna Hurt was performed by four men from Inlet's Dance Theatre Trainee Program. They vamped on in white tees and black pants and developed a series of big, rough stunts, increasingly daring and muscular but seldom truly acrobatic. And unlike acrobatics, which initially dazzles but often quickly loses an audience's full attention, This Is Gonna Hurt kept our attention to the last.
From Cool Cleveland contributors Victor Lucas and Elsa Johnson vicnelsaATearthlink.net (:divend:)