Your Mother Dances saucy and sweet at Christmas

Kayla Schroepfer struts and shoots in Elizabeth Johnson’s “Petty Things.” Luc Vanier photo.

Elizabeth Johnson is outrageous, but not only that.

Take Petty Things, for example, which Johnson’s Your Mother Dances company premiered Thursday night at UWM’s black-box Mitchell Hall Theater. For starters, six women — including the forty-something Johnson — burst on in blue and red cheerleader outfits with pleated skirts. The heavy beat of five songs by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers drove the dancing, which spoke the language of the female American yahoo.

They shook their asses and spanked them. They drew finger guns from imaginary holsters. They fist-pumped as if their boyfriends had just scored touchdowns. They wrestled. They formed an air band and lip-synched Petty’s lyrics, pounded on air drums and played power chords on air guitars. They dragged on imaginary joints. They ponied and skipped, and in one final affront to the piety and gravitas of modern dance, they leaned way back and slapped feet on the floor in one of the silliest walks this side of Monty Python. Through it all they projected a certain gleeful defiance and brazen sexuality.

Petty Things is sexy and hilarious, and its raw energy and sheer amazement sweep you along through its 20 or so minutes. But there’s more to it. Johnson develops this blunt – even dopey – material ingeniously. Once introduced, a step or gesture never goes away. Johnson re-faces it, shows it in new contexts, speeds it up, slows it down, varies the phrase. As time goes on, she winds the many strands into a single cord and achieves great variety within overall unity. Johnson thinks like a composer, and she knows how to marshal the force of abstract structure.

But let’s leave abstract structure, fascinating as it is, and reconsider the allusive material. In a way, this is Johnson playing dumb for effect. I know her offstage as

Jaimi Patterson and (back) Sarah Bromann in Gerald Casel’s “Save the Robots!” Luc Vanier photo.

a studious sort, an intellectual in a physical line of work, and a feminist. This isn’t the first time she’s presented stereotypical girly imagery in an ambivalent way. These cheerleaders – every boy’s fantasy – revel in their physicality. The satire in the dance is not so much social critique but self-satire. The female behavior represented in Petty Things is silly, but it’s also a hell of a lot of fun to do. Johnson, Beth Engel, Jaimi Patterson, Kayla Schroepfer, Maryhelen Wesner and Megan Zintek had a blast. They’re sexy, they know it, they like it and they’re in control of it. Sometimes girls just wanna have fun, and they have every right to.

Gerald Casel’s Save the Robots!, the polar opposite of Petty Things, followed. Kyle Olson’s free-ranging soundscape gave them no beat. Sarah Bromann and Steven LaFond, Engle, Patterson, Schroepfer, Wesner and Zintek wore white tops over black pants and moved through Iain Court’s (after Bent Stanton) somber light.

Casel here tried to abstract and distill his concerns about gentrification and the social disconnects he believes go along with it. The atomized nature of the dance reflects that. The dancers walk a lot, in complex traffic patterns designed for avoiding human contact, including eye contact. They pair off now and then, but the relationships last just a few moments. Lonely people, one-night stands. At one point, all but one lie down, to “sleep” uneasily and alone, while an insomniac paces and trembles solo.

Save the Robots! taxes attention for two main reasons. The first involves geometry; Casel gives us little in the way of focal points. As a rule, the dancers are scattered; the viewer searches the stage to see the dance, and that task is more wearying than you might think. The second has to do with the relentlessly stable emotional and energy levels. Save the Robots! is tense 100% of the time and offers not a hint of catharsis.

The effort involved and the constant tension combine to make what some might call too long a dance. But I don’t believe that Casel simply blundered. I think he did exactly what he wanted to do, including forcing extra effort on his audience. It’s not supposed to be comfortable. I can’t say I enjoyed this piece, but I respect it.

2 Good 2 Last, Johnson’s Christmas dance vintage 2010, has no trace of irony about it. Johnson, Wesner, LaFond and Steven Moses regard one another fondly and treat one another gently. They move with simple, unaffected grace to a set of Caribbean Christmas songs sung by Harry Belafonte and, in the finale, to “Blackout,” by Muse. In this sweet dance, Johnson interprets Belafonte’s words with literal innocence. When he sings “baby Jesus,” the quartet floats down into beautifully arranged nativity tableaux (they take turns being Jesus). As Mary and Joseph (Wesner and LaFond) travel the road to Bethlehem, Johnson rides Moses’ shoulders and spreads her wings, an angel to protect the wayfarers. 2 Good 2 Last is warm, poignant and oddly funny. We laugh partly because this naive vision of the world is so impossible and partly because we’re relieved that a worldly artist can imagine it for us. How beautiful to inhabit it for a little while at Christmastime.

Got It/Get Out of Town/In Transition repeats at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, Dec. 21-22, at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Mitchell Hall, Room 254, 3203 N. Downer Ave., at Kenwood Boulevard.

Reserved seating: $25; General: $20; Seniors, Students, and Children: $15. Tickets can be purchased through Brown Paper Tickets. Tickets at the door; cash or check only. Seating is limited. For questions about the performances, e-mail mom@yourmotherdances.com.

Going to a holiday-themed show? TCD’s been there first. Links to all our reviews right here.

Beth Engel in “Petty Things.” Luc Vanier photo.