DANCE REVIEWS : CUMMINGS’ FOCUS IS PHOTOGRAPHIC

Blondell Cummings makes documentary dances--genre portraits with a difference.

In fashioning her distinctive character vignettes, the New York performer/choreographer takes human behavior and subjects it to photographic--rather than choreographic--processing. She isolates emblematic gestures as if collecting movement snapshots. She then repeats them, like film or tape loops, in bold rhythmic patterns and often breaks them down into sequential motion-components--as if explicating life frame by frame.

Cummings’ “Food for Thought� suite, on the “Explorations� series, Thursday at the Japan America Theatre, consistently used this kind of formal manipulation to freshen the most commonplace subjects and mime skills.

Whether portraying a woman engaged in household tasks (“Chicken Soup�) or a man working at a construction site (“Meat and Potatoes�), she came on strong: lots of forceful, utilitarian motion and, particularly, energetic arm/hand movement supporting vivid characterizations.

As these characters went about their work, Cummings achieved emphasis through speedups/slowdowns, disruptions of continuity (jump cuts?) or shifts in scale (close-ups?). Thus, despite its stylized movement forms derived from modern dance and sign language, her performance seemed less like a conventional dance drama than a documentary film: an arrangement of authentic raw material.

Only in the “Chocolate� finale did she venture an orthodox dance-composition, a movement study fusing form and content. And, suddenly--wearing a cloth body-hood like Martha Graham’s in “Lamentation� 55 years ago--she looked like any first-year dance student failing at her first expressive etude. Indeed, every Christmas, many “Nutcracker� divertissements come closer to physically representing the attributes and appeal of chocolate ( and coffee and tea, as well) than this timid solo.

Her brief program Thursday proved that Cummings is a sharp observer, a sensational editor and a compelling performer, too. But, for now, creating dances seems beyond her; she can only process and manipulate what already exists. Without found material, she’s lost.