The Middlebury Campus

Issue date: 11/15/07 Section: Arts

Media Credit: Meaghen Brown Paul Matteson '00 and Jennifer Nugent perfom "Saint Smother Swans," the dynamic duet that opened their four-piece show in Mahaney CFA last weekend. [Click to enlarge]

Nugent + Matteson Dance, an intimate and charismatic company consisting of its two title performers, Jennifer Nugent and Paul Matteson '00, graced Middlebury's dance theatre on Nov. 9 and 10 with a playful, concise evening program. Matteson, who graduated from Middlebury seven years ago, has been collaborating with Nugent since they founded the company together in 2005. They are strikingly different as dancers - she is a weighty powerhouse on stage, while he is nearly air bound, deliciously lithe and articulate. This incongruity makes for an unusual spin on the heterosexual duo and contributed to the program's edgy, personal tone. What Nugent and Matteson share is a presence that is unabashedly human and a gaze that is so serious it is nearly cross-eyed. Together, these qualities give them the touching and sometimes comic earnestness of children. They are not merely admirable as performers - they are loveable.

The evening opened with "Saint Smother Swans," a duet choreographed by Terry Creach. The pair wound and cupped the space around and between them with endless gesticulations of arms and legs, joining in brief encounters and then dispersing along individual paths à la Merce Cunningham. At one point, Matteson balanced in the air, curled up on Nugent's shoulder, then bounded back onto his own trajectory. The dancers moved with constancy and effort and never arrived at a destination, leaving the audience with the wistful impression of close misses and unresolved journeys. The crackly soundtrack of atmospheric music and a wash of flat, warm stage lighting silhouetted the dancers against an expansive landscape. As the lights faded, Nugent's sausage-sized, powerful fingers stretched and twitched in the air above her head. This battle between the individual body and the great gulf of space was apparent throughout the evening. Nugent and Matteson are interested in human smallness - their solo work to follow revolved around childhood experiences and suggested the childlike vulnerability of adult bodies.

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