The following review is courtesy of Marcie Hill-Jacobsen, writer:

I know nothing of Norse mythology except for my passing familiarity with Odin, thanks to preadolescent Dungeons & Dragons explorations in the basement of my childhood neighbor’s house. So at the opening of Joe Chvala’s “ Between Fire and Ice (Mjllnir II)” I found myself out of my mythological depth, struggling to catch up with the myth stories presented, working out the names and characters and each piece’s relationship to the others in the show. Clipping on my literary cap, I dutifully searched for parallels between the myths and the postmodern world gone awry, following Chvala’s statement in the program notes that the original “ Mjllnir” was “ a way…to make sense of the twentieth century,” in 1995, reworked for 2005 to reflect on the world that has by now gone in “ every possible wrong direction.” I drank in the gorgeous but unfussy visual presentation. (Drapey brown robes on the singers! Green lighting! White plastic garbage bags for ice!) I listened to the Scandinavian-language singing. (Beautiful and unintelligible–so transporting!) I giggled at the comic moments in the dramatic sequences (Funny husband in purple silk jammies!), I watched the images of land, trees and human bodies undulating across the screen upstage, and did everything I could to link one piece with another to discern an overarching narrative in all this theatrical excellence. My conclusion: I didn’t get it. The pieces never coalesced to tell one story and I wasn’t learning a darn thing about Norse mythology.

But that’s fine with me. “ Between Fire and Ice (Mjllnir II)” isn’t a platform to tell ancient stories or edify its audience toward any pro-Scandinavian Humanities end. Generally, each vignette as lifted from the Volsunga Saga and The Niebelungenlied is an avenue to examine the human relationships and flaws found in the stories, through movement, in the most kinetic and perfectly fierce ways possible. These dances are unashamedly beautiful and acrobatic, often masculine, surgically fluid, and sometimes frightening in their speed and confrontation–such as the standout duet between legendary rival queens Kriemhild and Brunhilde. Played out here it the erotic connection between enemy women and its violent, horrific manifestations. Dancers Megan McClellan and Karla Grotting face off with ferocious grace and naked emotion, hating yet loving the power their hatred of each other gives them. Honestly, I loved it too. And I was terrified for them as they screamed and threw each other and interlocked limbs. For a moment I wasn’t watching a performance, but rather, the darker selves of two stunning dancers emerging for real.

In its most literal moments, this show’s analogies to contemporary life are intellectual and easygoing, such as a corporate-world parody in which a number of human figures in suits or skirts engage in martial dances on a boardroom table to win a king-of-the-hill-style contest. Once the contest is won and dancer and archetypal masculine figure Luke Walrath dances triumphant, the trickster god Loki handily throws Walrath off the table, who hits the floor and reels with shock, then laughs. He’s laughing off the humiliation of a failure he didn’t foresee, the failure of a man who’s won because of his skill and craftiness but lost because of his arrogance–he hadn’t seen Loki coming during his victory dance. This tidy exposé of human folly makes for the clearest connection between myths and the living realities they seek to inform.

I enjoyed this rare slice of (relatively) straightforward storytelling; it seemed appropriate given Chvala’s outspoken intent to explore modern life through story, but again, this show isn’t about stories. It’s about the dreamlike power that myth exerts, and dance’s ability to showcase that power.

By the time the cast bowed and the audience howled its congratulations, my efforts to intellectualize the show were thoroughly irrelevant. I’d seen a collection of risky, gorgeous, deeply human dances that took me to the heart some of my own personal conflicts and fears. And this is how I knew that the myths presented in this show are not to be studied, but rather to be understood through the singular, physical liturgies of movement and music. See Mjllnir II for its pain and power. See it for its reckless beauty. See it and let it happen to you.

The following review is courtesy of John Munger, Director of Research and Information for Dance USA

Thoughts of Robert Frost insist on being attended. “ Some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice,” wrote the American poet.

In Joe Chvala’s Nordic world of titanic, uncaring forces and gods who really ARE crazy, the world doesn’t end in fire or ice; it begins between them.

The notion is exquisitely Finlandian. Where else would life begin in that sort of climate? The day to day travails of that pre-technological society contended with glacial blizzards on one hand and fire –magical, terrifying fire – on the other hand. Between the lethal calm of arctic drifts and the consuming blaze that could roar through thatch and logs, or scorch agonized disclosure from captives, was the warm and comfy bed where life begins, thrust rhythmically into mystical quickening by man and wife.

Or not. The first resonating image of this two-hour layering of epic Norse mythology with twentieth century angst is a mundane contemporary breakfast dialogue over coffee and newspaper in which the man irritably snaps, “ You’re not pregnant are you?!” and the wife sighs cynically before answering, “ Fat chance.” Well, well.

A great many conflicting images compete for our attention from the very outset. When I came down the steep aisle of the McGuire Theater I first noticed on stage the ritualized place settings of a baronial table and its large, solid-color, stark furnishings. Then I saw the aluminum tubing and black drapes of the frankly disclosed functional theater, then the big-screen projection on which mythic images alternated with disturbing facial close-ups. There was a crawl-text along the base of the screen that might at one moment explain how, in the Eddas of Norse mythology, trees grew from the hair of the First Man and moments later might narrate how some married guy regrets that the memory of his father calling his mother a bitch has resonated into his own marriage.

The lights dimmed. Enter the First Man and First Woman …uh… quibbling over some unspecified editorial blood-boiler in the morning paper. Epic grandeur contrasted with robe-and-slippered triviality. There was ominously provocative foreshadowing of things to come. There was a laugh or two. There was mystery. The scene ended, fade to dark, and the actors themselves joined efforts with a swiftly efficient set-change that took them out of character and into the sort of experience you relish at cutting edge productions with no budget and no fly-space.

Then wham! Straight into the halls of the Gods and the beginnings of the universe. Dancers swirled in an exquisitely structured sort of Brownian motion evocative both of chaos and of emerging order. Sound effects thundered, dramatic lighting design exploded with microprecise focus, and amidst this high-tech theatricality I was ready for the Gods themselves. I got them. Odin had groupies and an eye-patch, Loki was a vaudevillian song-and-dance man, while Ruth MacKenzie’s glorious voice poured a rich syrup of high-art musicality over the raucous mead-hall shenanigans. Oh, and the Gods called each other bad names using the F-word a fair amount.

So in a nutshell there was a hell-of-a-lot jammed together with a Muspellheim-of-a-lot. The tone shifted with incredible speed, variety and complexity. I got confused. Not so much in the intellectual sense of confusion, but confused in the audience-to-performer relationship. Was this narrative or episodic? Literal or impressionistic? Dance or theater? Funny, or scary, or polemical, or vaudevillian? I wanted so badly to enjoy everything and to know how I should do so. But it was hard to follow the thread.

There were wonderful “ moments” that lasted a long time.

The duet of female competition, vengeance, hatred and subtle erotic possibility between Megan McClellan and Karla Grotting was a miracle of utterly abandoned risk and commitment. They transfigured themselves, each other and me too with dance-skill that was so virtuosic and so masterful that it went beyond an unschooled audience’s limitation of only seeing hard tricks and entered the realm of jaw-dropping total theater.

The opening of the second half, just after intermission, was an entrance into the hellish world of Muspellheim. It was one of the least explained and most comprehensible transitions of this many-layered, many-toned evening. Too often in the first half hour of the show I got lost in the narratives that came at me through song lyrics, on-screen-text, spoken word, and mime. Now welcome to the gates of Muspellheim. It was scary as hell. That’s all I needed.

Thus also with the women’s duet. I didn’t really need their intricate family relations, nor even their names. The dance told me everything. Similarly, when Ruth MacKenzie near the very end of the evening sang in (I think) Finnish instead of narrative English, it was the most magical of her moments. I sensed, rather than “ grasped.” It was visceral, rather than explicated.

Soon after the entrance to Muspellheim came a hard-hammering dance that used to be called “ The Red Doors” and that was one of three or four set pieces, each wonderful, that showcased Joe’s particular genius for using movement and percussive elements to generate RAW POWER. There was also the bureaucratic table with the paper shuffling, at once hysterical and loathsome. And the Berserkers, a masterpiece of pure fury.

I think that part of what Joe does is to created intricate and very fast spatial patterns, mostly with where the body takes the hands, often emphasizing these patterns with sticks or other percussive devices held in the hands. Watching the white or red or silver objects flashing through tight space like animated lace at light-speed conveys, not the detail of dancers’ awareness of where they are, but the power of their mastery. We feel the power because we, frankly, feel awe.

See this show. You may have to wade through some challenging exposition and a maelstrom of conflicting theatrical tones, but you’re gonna get your breath knocked out.

The following review is courtesy of Emily Johnson, director of catalyst dances

If I could ask a question of Anna Teresa De Keersmaeker regarding “ Once” it would be:

Why did you choose to fast forward through those particular two paragraphs of the Bob Dylan song “ With God on our Side” (we got to see the words flash on the wall as they flew by without sound – I only caught the word “ Russians”).

If I could ask a question of Joan Baez regarding “ In Concert Part 2” it would be:

Why did you tell your audience they could sing along to ”The Battle Hymn of the Republic?”

The first question is because Anna Teresa De Keersmaeker made a million decisions regarding the creation and performance of “ Once” and out of all those decisions, I only question one. It could be that those paragraphs become too specific – Germans and World War II (hate), Russians and the Cold War (fear). This theory doesn’t hold though because if it did, it would bother me that the text “ The Indians died”…(oh, this country was young) is dramatically highlighted, not only on the wall in silence, but through her body crumpled on the floor (as if Indians are less specific that Germans or Russians). Rather, the exact moment the record scratched, her legs fell and she stayed still and crumpled as “ The Indians fell” read on the wall behind her was genius and simple and clear and as specific to hate and fear as it was maddening and sad. Perhaps the omission of a few paragraphs is simply because the song is a long one.

The second question I would ask because last night many in the audience at “ Once” began to softly sing “ The Battle Hymn of the Republic” both with Joan Baez’s voice as support and without. My first impulse was to get a little choked up. We were well into the performance, my emotions were already being prodded by Ms. De Keersmaeker, people around me had already cried, and low and behold – people began to sing! I was struck then with the horrid irony of a group of Americans singing a battle hymn, a war song. Yes, it is gently sung, yes it was born out of a union army camp during the civil war…but it has a hell of a lot of marching in it, a hell of a lot of righteousness, hell, it was sung at Ronald Reagan’s funeral. My horror gave way to awe when the genius of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, and Anna Teresa De Keersmaeker blended – from 1963 to the present moment on stage. (Joan Baez told the audience they could sing along to the battle hymn, which they did. She countered with the Dylan song “ With God on our Side” (look up the lyrics and read them), revealing what the audience fell into and De Keersmaeker used that moment in a concert to create an alive, poignant and universal showcase of what it means to fall into step (sing a battle hymn) without consequence (“ accept it all bravely”), from a safe place, and with more than a little pride “ For you don’t count the dead When God’s on your side.“ )

God, I’m quoting Dylan songs – I’ll move on.

Besides, perhaps the above is too “ political.” Folk songs are a way to protest wars and injustice and so are dances but “ Once” made me think that there might be a few people we should all pay more attention to. People who don’t count their work as “ political” outright, but who view and live in the world in a way that their depictions and their art lives outside the boundaries of politics. A higher level of understanding? Maybe. Maybe those of us who have to view work as either political or unworthy are lagging behind. Whether I lag behind or not, I wish “ Once” were playing to more American cities. I’d love to get all Americans willingly singing “ The Battle Hymn…” then listening to “ God on Our Side” as they see on a flickering screen anyone they could ever imagine having a war with as the silhouette of a person, larger than those fighting on the screen breathes and moves a little. The silhouette (Ms. De Keersmaeker’s) became a visual depiction of what it’s like when you wish so hard that a) your heart wasn’t breaking, b) there weren’t any wars, c) you could bring someone back to life or d) any other impossibly huge wish that takes over your body and ultimately you can’t do anything about. The moral fiber of war was literally projected onto De Keersmaeker’s skin as the moral fibers of herself were projected back onto war.

I love being captivated by simplicity. Her entrance (walking in a door to the side of the stage and taking off her shoes) was as simple as her exit (putting on her shoes and shirt and walking away). The first minutes of the dance are stark and in a nicely redundant way, put us all in the same room. Obviously we are all in the same room, but in silence she has herself and us – the audience – lit equally. If you’re lit, you’re as important as the person on stage or next to you, with as much responsibility and blame as anyone else. Her movements are as bare as the slight shuffling and coughs of us. The moments she mouths the words of a song as she dances or touches her face – are very nonchalant, unassuming and earnest at the same time. I couldn’t help but notice others sitting around me doing almost the same kinds of things.

Perhaps it is her stage presence, perhaps it is her commitment to her work but moments into “ Once” I completely trusted it. I trusted that the performance would contain a little more than I could grasp and I decided I could trust the choices De Keersmaeker would make. I say “ would make” because at times it did seem she was choosing how to say/move/look at us next. Like when you have to stop your sentence in the midst of it to choose the next word – because you want to choose a word that holds meaning in its sound, in its pronunciation – a very important word. A friend of mine after the show said she knows she’s seeing a good piece when her creativity is tapped in the midst of performance – when her mind is allowed to wander a bit. This place of wandering – of being in more than one place at a time is a fertile place and I don’t think I’ve ever seen a performer do that. It was as if we were seeing De Keersmaeker perform and choose how her performance would go next – listen to her record as a child at home and hear it on stage at the McGuire – protest a war and be non-political – be 15 and 45-years-old at the same time.

I also love when a dancer is so intensely a dancer you can see it in her hands. This is why dancers train so hard – so that dancing/technique (whatever that technique may be) isn’t what shows. What shows instead is the reason for dancing. De Keersmaeker says, “ I am obsessed by pure and taut lines, magnetized by the rigorous equilibrium of classical dance, but while I can formally execute this severity, beauty and certainty, it doesn’t mesh with me at an intimate level. So I put up resistance and use the resulting tension – between pride and fall, between charging forward and retreating, between certitude and doubt, between reaching out and withdrawing, between the straightness of a line and the meandering curve – to compose “ a clear exposé of the odyssey of introspection…”

Yes, she is classically trained and I appreciated it so much. It let me see her reasons for creating “ Once.” The dancing brought me to consider my own thoughts. Her dancing taps into whatever current allows her to communicate. It was the perfect example of an artist using her potential to perform to perform rather than performing her potential.

I also appreciated her tiny foibles, her mimicking of words, the literalness of a lyric like “ go away” as she puts her hand up and turns her head. Such literalness would usually make me squirm with embarrassment, but here it was like when you see a kid copy you – the kid is trying to learn something new, to figure something out, to try something on – and quickly it (the act/word the kid copied) teaches you (the adult) what you’re like and sometimes you like it, sometimes you squirm. I had a composition teacher in college who told us at the time not to use songs with words. Songs with words are too powerful I assumed. This Baez album is powerful but “ Once” is absolutely not a recreation of word-meaning into movement. I appreciated how De Keersmaeker “ non-politically” but very clearly pointed out that dance is as powerful a language as any when she literally acted out “ Hush little baby” and it simply demonstrated that a lullaby is a lullaby whether it is in words or in movement.

Have I used the word genius enough yet? I am a little overwhelmed that all of the choices Anna Teresa De Keersmaeker made make sense. I am astounded by the integrity of “ Once.” How can lying down on the floor and half completing a backbend make sense with turns and a leap, classical lines, a fierce focus, small gestures, the singing of “ We Shall Overcome,” the screaming into a blanket, undoing and redoing a bun? Somehow it does and she does what Joan Baez did with the battle hymn – points out that we all have our patterns, our skills, and our mistakes to contend with each moment and that the choices we make really do affect someone sitting next to you and someone across the globe. It’s so much bigger than politics.

She put her face into the open part of a very bright and I assume very hot standing light. She played us a record from her childhood. She danced for over an hour. How much more does she have to give us before we understand that if we all took time to turn our thoughts into communicable meaning considering the feeling in our guts we wouldn’t find ourselves singing loudly or softly of marching at all – our guts probably wouldn’t allow it – and we would all be on to much better (and hopefully more peaceful) actions and thoughts to consider at all.