Dance - Fun with rope and ladder

For a few primordial pulses, the dancers of the Agnes Scott Studio Dance Theatre look like the first group of ambulatory cells to abandon the sea and make a break for higher ground. Seven dancers in an amorphous pile gasp as one. Then sharp geometries assert themselves (triangular, to be precise), and, Darwin be damned, why did we ever leave the shapeless seas?

There’s an old industrial metal ladder on the stage — a right triangle on wheels — and the dancers seem compelled to climb it, though inevitably they leap-dive-slip-fall off in graceful but once again defeated arcs and flips. All except one who tries to escape, but is restrained by a long rope whose ends are held by the climbers. Leaning into the rope as though reined in, reaching out beyond it, she forms the point of another triangle.

The dance, choreographed by Studio Dance Theatre’s coordinator, Bridget Roosa, was originally a prop-inspired piece. Roosa had used the ladder to hang fabrics for the company’s last show and decided to see what her dancers could do with it. Experimenting on the ladder while it spun and tipped, the dancers developed new ways to support themselves and new places to sink their weight.

The show also includes a jazz number, a nice pointe piece (in which Michelle Nguyen is particularly fine), and a re-creation of Doris Humphrey’s 1928 classic, “Water Study.” The latter dance is performed in silence but for audible breath cues. The dancers bring new meaning to “doing the wave” as they re-create water in motion. Again they become one, returned to the sea as a single body of water.

Studio Dance Theatre presents Danceworks, Fri.-Sat., Dec. 3-4, 8 p.m., at Agnes Scott College’s Gaines Chapel, 141 E. College Ave., Decatur. $5 (free for faculty, students and staff). 404-471-6940. www.agnesscott.edu.