BodyVox dance company’s new Pearl District digs—10,000
square feet of jaw-dropping space in an old carriage house, just
starting renovations—are likely to be the talk of the Portland
performance community this season. The dance center, even in its raw
and unfinished form, is sensational.

The show that opened that new center last week, Foot Opera
Files, is something else. Foot Opera Files weds the
pitch-black modern pop tunes of Tom Waits, as sung by members of the
Portland Opera Studio Artists Program, to new dances created by six
BodyVox company members. The results are mixed.

First, the breathtaking part: All five young Portland Opera artists
sang the hell out of this music, approaching the tunes as cabaret art
songs in the style of Kurt Weill, backed by a solid four-man band under
the musical direction of Michael Papillo. I won’t soon forget that
burning image of mezzo-soprano Hannah Sharene Penn lying seductively on
the floor, purring into her hand mic, over and over, “You’ve gotta let
it go.”

As a dance company, BodyVox excels at arresting imagery, and there
are a number of gorgeous and memorable tableaux among the “Files”: a
young woman being lassoed by a string of gold stars; a mass of writhing
bodies, pulsing in deadly rhythm; a tricky two-step with a two-by-four.
But much of the dancemaking is surprisingly literal, like Eric
Skinner’s choreography in tunes like “Rains on Me” (a torrential
downpour on BodyVox’s Jamey Hampton) or “Picture in a Frame” (in which
Ashley Roland poses her male love interest in the center of an empty
bed frame).

I left with many questions. Why does so much of the dancing look
improvised and under-formed? Why does the company rely so heavily on
props as gimmicks to drive the dance? And WTF were they thinking by
staging Waits’ haunting “Black Wings” as a wince-inducing scene in a
boxing ring?

At the very least, go for the unforgettable opening six minutes,
which offer a glimpse of BodyVox at their best: a seductive, playful
slow reveal of the entire company, all of them dressed to kill and
grinning up to their ears as they slink into their new dance center
home. There’s magic in this place, their movements seemed to suggest.
And for those first few moments, I believed them.