The ethereal “Astral Converted,” revived by Trisha Brown, is a mesmerizing but monotonous trip to outer space. (Stephanie Berger)
On a sultry summer evening, seeing Trisha Brown’s “Astral Converted” is as refreshing as escaping into a dark, cool aquarium. But refreshing doesn’t always equal exciting.
Revived on Tuesday night after not being performed in full for 18 years, the hourlong work brings together three big names of contemporary art: Brown, who is one of the senior mistresses of postmodern dance, composer John Cage and artist Robert Rauschenberg.
Cage and Rauschenberg were famed for their avant-garde contributions to pieces by modern dance giant Merce Cunningham, and their work in “Astral Converted” has a similarly detached feel.
The cavernous interior of the Park Avenue Armory is kept dark and softly glowing. Nine dancers approach the stage almost invisibly; eight of them in two neat lines like schoolchildren. The left-out dancers wait quietly at the sides.
But rather than the dancers, the real star is Rauschenberg’s set, eight metal towers made from auto parts — including headlights — and powered by car batteries. The auto lamps provide the lighting for the whole show. Between 2 feet and 8 feet high, the towers have a DIY feel, like someone built a robot out of an Erector Set.
The humans wear simple gray costumes and lie on the floor, as if they were reclining on a picnic blanket in a painting by Manet. They move like pond life, with fluid, easy motion, falling with gravity and rebounding.
Some deluxe janitorial work is also involved; the dancers take large brooms and trace patterns along the floor. When two dancers jump up onto the brooms, they’re wittily and literally swept off their feet.
“Astral Converted” is pastoral and calming, but there’s plenty of that for an hour, without much contrast. Toward the end, the dancers mass together and speed up a bit as Cage’s seemingly random recorded score tweedles and blorps along. The piece ends as abruptly as it begins, when the lights go out.
Beautiful fish in an aquarium do their own thing, and they don’t care if you’re there to see it. The question is — do you want to watch for 10 minutes, or an hour?