Dance by Sternberg in Tension With Art

To use visual art as a reference point for dances is to invite comparison, as Donna Sternberg must have known while creating “Dances Inspired by Art,” which was presented by Donna Sternberg & Dancers Friday night at the small Strub Theatre on the campus of Loyola Marymount University in Westchester. There can be a kind of movement on canvas and a pictorial emphasis in dancing, but the downside of combining the two would be dances that rely on a few visual ideas or related movement motifs that never develop their own kinetic lives.

“Emily Carr: Paintings in Motion,” (a premiere) one of Sternberg’s two pieces based on specific artworks, took gentle nature as its almost static theme--curving in the wind and creature-like pawing to taped New Age flute and piano. “Portraits by Egon Schiele,” (1995) to the sad, edgy violins of Shostakovich and Britten, was slightly more adventurous but relied mostly on the angled poses of women who stare out from Schiele’s paintings.

“Earthprints” (1990) had no clear connection to visual art--certainly Sternberg’s soft and lyrical version of modern dance had little to do with the taped Drums of Burundi. “Fractured Images” (another premiere) used almost-opaque fabric panels in predictable hide-and-seek ways. As elsewhere, the device (or Sternberg’s habit) of choreographing “to the front,” as if the fourth wall were a mirror, and the way dancers are evenly spaced or cross the stage doing one step, added to the feeling that these dances were classroom studies. Sketches possibly, caught in unproductive tension with other visual art forms.