DANCE REVIEW | TINA CROLL & COMPANY
Pure Movement Bubbling Forth From Its Deep Source

Megan Sprenger and Eli McAfee in Tina Croll’s “Ancient Springs.”

By JENNIFER DUNNING
Published: March 19, 2007

Tina Croll describes her “Ancient Springs” as a journey of the spirit. Well, such journeys are a dime a dozen on the city’s dance stages. But “Ancient Springs,” performed on Saturday night at the Danspace Project at St. Mark’s Church, is an imaginative, beautifully performed pleasure because it can be looked at simply as dancing. This 80-minute piece — set to distinctive accompaniment including an American Indian reciting the Lord’s Prayer in Cherokee, Tiny Tim, a mariachi band and Ethiopian jazz — juxtaposes and mingles a chorus of 14 young women, each of whom manages to stand out unobtrusively, with six soloists who include Ms. Croll and Eli McAfee.

The cast’s lone man, Mr. McAfee joins Ms. Croll, lithe and silver-haired, in brief formal get-togethers, sitting on folding chairs and dressed in black suit jackets. He winds his way with sly near-inscrutability through the crowds of women as they form and re-form in geometric paths, gallop on the wind like valkyries and lilt together like Greek line dancers, returning to the theater’s side risers to sit between dances. Best of all he accompanies each of the remaining four soloists in short, tangy duets across the floor.

Megan Sprenger has already distinguished herself in a sweet, mysterious solo. She and Mr. McAfee dance a little gavotte of sorts that almost imperceptibly turns wild and giggly by the end. Caitlin Grater is next, twisted and convulsive before Mr. McAfee’s sympathetic gaze, until the tables are turned. He and Dana Doggett converse in a sign language for feinting, spitting arms. With Marybeth Hurtt he slips into a stately waltz that draws in other dancers like a dance party on some town square.

Scattered plastic dishes, karate kicks and large gauzy wings figure prominently in “Ancient Springs,” but it is the quieter pleasures of the piece that linger. Ms. Croll teamed with Jamie Cunningham years ago to create From the Horse’s Mouth, a dance and storytelling series that chronicles dance history in its most minute and vivid details. Here she is a quietly majestic still point, with a presence and a choreographic style that are the product of long, thoughtful and optimistic years in New York modern dance.