ANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON, N.Y. — Nail-biter: The phrase is vivid, evoking an agitated psychological state through a physical image that is both banal and disturbing. It’s an apt title for the latest work by the choreographer Beth Gill.
Gill’s “Nail Biter,” which had its premiere here at the Fisher Center at Bard College on Friday, is a nail-biter in a peculiar sense. Since her 2016 piece “Catacomb,” Gill has been developing a kind of pedestrian surrealism. Everything seems absolutely deliberate but also mysterious. The dancers give the sense that they must behave exactly as they do, but also that they don’t know why. This tension produces suspense, even though the action is so sparely distributed that a viewer can easily space out.
Because of that spareness, entrances are especially dramatic. Gill also dances in the work, and the first parts of her to emerge are her bare feet; they poke out from a wing before retracting, like those of the Wicked Witch of the East. Gradually, the rest of her appears: topless, covered in white paint, leaving a residue as she slides her body along the floor, holding a lighted candle.
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She both exposes and disguises herself, as she did in her last work, “Pitkin Grove,” during which she dipped her topless torso into paint. Here, the candle connects to Thomas Dunn’s scenic and lighting design, especially to curtains that partially descend and a ragged painted backdrop with a hole in the middle. The atmosphere is ghosts-in-the-theater gothic.
The dancer Maggie Cloud seems to come from that world. She rolls in on a battered piano, looking rather like Wednesday Addams in a black dress and three braids, one of which descends over her face. But other costumes, by Baille Younkman, bring other associations. Jennifer Lafferty appears in a white leotard and boots, Marilyn Maywald Yahel in sparkly hot pants and a crop top.
These worlds overlap, their characters largely separate but occasionally touching. The dancers’ motions might repeat but they rarely cohere into phrases. Some dancers leave and never return; some show up late. What holds these pieces together, sustaining both suspense and direction, is mainly Jon Moniaci’s spooky score, feeding in organ tones, a frame drum, crashing objects, a choir.
This dreamlike work invites dream analysis. Gill has dedicated it to her childhood dance teacher, Rose-Marie Menes, who danced with the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo and died in 2021. Is the theatrical imagery related to that loss? Cloud’s precise motions draw on ballet, and she disappears through the hole in the curtain. But the other dancers keep suggesting the 1980s. Jordan Demetrius Lloyd hints at Michael Jackson with his gloves, white socks and black shoes. Lafferty, who might be a choreographer stand-in, arranging the others, resembles Jennifer Beals in “Flashdance,” another role model for a dancer growing up in the ’80s.
These associations might just be mine, though. None of the possible antecedents are reproduced exactly. Instead, they appear as in a vivid dream, unexplained but not at all random, so there is a sense of design, even if unconscious. In “Nail Biter,” this unconscious imagery, exposed and disguised, carries the anxiety of compulsion. But it isn’t a nightmare. There’s also the delight of imaginative artistry and choreographic craft, decisions that feel like discoveries — surprises, like those feet, that might make you smile.
Beth Gill: Nail Biter
Through Sunday at the Fisher Center at Bard College; fishercenter.bard.edu.
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