Dance - Falling for Dishman

It’s remarkable to consider the small surface area we balance ourselves upon. Two feet, each just a few inches wide and, well, about a foot long. With a couple meters of us tottering overhead. It’s a miracle we’re not always falling.

Dancers know the astonishment of this better than we. They lean and leap beyond the bounds of balance, never outgrowing the thrill of spinning to the edge of vertigo. They stay standing where we couldn’t, but even they fall.

Falling, a new full-length dance from choreographer Elizabeth Dishman and the Coriolis Dance Project, begins with the antics of children, dancing themselves through the delights of getting dizzy in “Free Fall,” (with Amanda Exley Lower contributing her trademark, lovable-scamp grin). From there, the dance follows a life cycle of falls: falling in and out of love, fear of falling and failing, decline and death …

In “Love in Fall,” the dancers move with assurance, gravity a familiar partner they neither fight nor seduce. In a doubled (and, for portions, tripled) duet, the choreography plays with surprising phrases of unison, a technique previously willfully absent from Dishman’s palette. Emerging confidently from her accustomed intricacy, these phrases sing gratitude for the one who will always steady you.

A study of decline and death, “A Final Fall” features Hila Kerekesh, a phenomenally subtle young dancer recently arrived from Israel. She is surrounded at first by Gregory Catellier, Sherone Price and George Staib II — the three men having just finished the tilting, tottering “Fear of ... Falling.” She begins in complete and grand command of her movements. Slowly, her raw humanity seeps in, and you begin to see the effort, at first sensuous, soon strained. Eyes closed, she wavers, stumbles and others step forward to steady her, catch her, hold her tenderly. With heat, she pushes some aside, denying her decline. Claire Horn leads her and gently positions her hands for her. At last, Catellier lifts her above his head and carries her away, a fallen angel flying.

Coriolis Dance Project presents Falling, Jan. 21-23 at Emory University’s Schwartz Center for the Performing Arts, 1700 N. Decatur Road. Fri. and Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 3 p.m. Free. 404-931-0212.??