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  • Eugenie Frerich

Portland choreographer Tahni Holt's Duet Love begins with iconic images of heterosexual couples, and breaks down those images over the course of the evening. The show opens with four dancers, two women and two men, striking and holding poses in the silent theater. These establishing shots let the audience know we're dealing with archetypes, as do gendered costuming touches like a male dancer's collared shirt and a female dancer's cleavage-exposing top.

Eventually, the dancers split into pairs, one set taking control of the spotlights while the other pair poses together. A witchy singer—longtime Holt collaborator Corrina Repp—does a slinky lounge number that reminded me of Twin Peaks for no reason I could pin down. The dancers come onstage wearing beige sacks; one at a time, they wriggle shoulders-first out of their coverings, naked bodies emerging. Subsequent duets are performed in the buff. (I am torn on this: Do I like looking at beautiful bodies? Yep. And in a dance context, I appreciate a chance to see how bodies move without clothes getting in the way. But isn't physical perfection a little bit... boring?) Holt seems to be going for a sort of tabla rasa thing here—these dancers are only their bodies, stripped of outward signifiers of gender. When they eventually put their clothes back on, it's to mix up and reconfigure "masculine" and "feminine" costuming and affects.

I typically really enjoy Holt's perspective, but this show didn't work for me; I found it kind of condescending, and it conflated gender expression and sexuality in weird ways. I also don't find the show's central question—per the PICA blurb, "If masculine and feminine are forces and factors, how do markers of gender inflect the movement, emotion, and decisions of dancing bodies?"—particularly compelling; I think it might resonate more with people who are more deeply invested in contemporary dance than I am.

For a different—glowing—take on the show, check out this review from our sister paper The Stranger.

Duet Love runs through Tuesday. Details here.