Near the middle of “/Asunder,” the collaborative work by Yin Mei Dance on view through Saturday at the Dance Center of Columbia College, the performers enact a startling drama.
They unroll a long, draping canvas that has been hanging on the stage’s backdrop and gradually move it toward the front, their heads poking through as they march the canvas forward.
They create a kind of white version of a long, red carpet, but the mood is far from a royal welcome. Instead, the four dancers take hundreds of rubber-tipped toy arrows, resting in bundles at the edge of the stage, and toss them violently onto the canvas.
Amazingly, the arrows, festooned with bright, pink feathers, stick. Before long, the roadlike stretch of canvas is strewn with clusters of arrows, creating the image of an abstract garden made of wood and pink. The action and result are so stunning that they would serve most performers as a finale.
But there is little predictable about “/Asunder,” an alternately hypnotic and confounding 75-minute piece. Choreographer Yin Mei, who is also one of the four performers, boasts a mystical allure in theme and movement.
Much of the work is cast in an almost maddening slow motion, an Eastern atmosphere of meditation and arrested time.
The dancers often stand nearly still, their movement concentrated in the fluttering delicacy of the hands, the supplicating undulation of the arms or a confined twisting motion that briefly converts the body into a pretzel.
In a program note, Yin Mei explains that her subject is that of opposites; of man, woman, East and West. Sometimes her symbolism is clear, as in the haunting section in which she and Miroto, trained in classical Javanese dance, slowly move toward each other, meeting in the sweetest encounter, his hands lightly grazing her face in gentle affection.
Elsewhere, though, she can be obtuse, providing a bizarre, almost unintentionally comic imagery.
In one section, dancer Jeanine Durning emerges holding a French horn that slyly covers her bare breasts. Will Orzo (the only performer in classic Western attire) emerges and approaches her, as if in a mating dance. But when he reaches her, he grasps over her shoulders, not for her breasts, but for her horn, on which he plays an old-fashioned love song.
For all of its irritating indulgences, “/Asunder” is a provocative work, wonderfully buoyed by the contribution of visual artist Cai Guo-Qiang, who no doubt contributed the garden of pink arrows, and composer Robert Een. Een’s minimalist melodies with haunting vocals, accompanied by string and drums, are provided live by the composer and his topnotch ensemble.
Though her choreography is studied and not always memorable, Yin Mei’s sense of multimedia experimentation is entrancing.
“/Asunder” plays through Saturday at the Dance Center, 1306 S. Michigan Ave. For tickets: 312-344-8300.
