ANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON, N.Y. — Some of the best ideas are hatched on the road. The collaborative beginnings of “Dance,” a 1979 work, occurred when the choreographer Lucinda Childs and the composer Philip Glass were touring with Robert Wilson’s opera “Einstein on the Beach.”
Mr. Glass proposed that Ms. Childs ask Sol LeWitt to contribute the décor for “Dance.” At first LeWitt was reluctant, telling Ms. Childs that her work was visually complex enough on its own. Happily for all, he caved in.
The production, which was seen Friday night at the Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts here and reconstructed as part of the Bard SummerScape festival, is set to three 20-minute sections of Mr. Glass’s “Dance.” LeWitt’s magnificent black-and-white film is projected on a scrim at the front of the stage. Dancers move behind it, and the effect is that of a ghostly duet of mediums in which layered images work wonders with space and volume, weaving a richly detailed theatrical tapestry.
For the revival the negative of LeWitt’s film was transferred to digital format, and the score was remastered. But at Bard there was also an unofficial fourth collaborator: the architect Frank Gehry, whose design of the center’s Sosnoff Theater — a marvel of wooden balconies — provides a scintillating frame.
The core of “Dance,” whether rooted in Mr. Glass’s sweeping score or Ms. Childs’s exacting steps, is untainted motion. In the first section four couples skim across the stage in a sequence of repeated steps: the body tilts with a leg pointed to the side, then shifts in profile, followed by a quick, low straddle jump, until a hop sends a dancer forward with a leg trailing behind.
But just as this flow of motion unravels a chain of horizontal lines across the stage, the video, with large-scale dancers executing the same steps as the live performers on a black-and-white grid, completes the design like a draping technique. The dancers, dressed in fitted white pants and tops, wear jazz shoes; the effect is that of gliding on ice.
In many ways Ms. Childs’s sleek, methodical steps embody the sweep and intricacy of the agile footwork found in figure skating, in which the slightest misstep can destroy the flow. Quite obviously she is knitting patterns onto space, but the most striking element holding all of this together is rhythm.
Ms. Childs appears in the second section — courtesy of the film — with Caitlin Scranton performing live. For Ms. Scranton, matching the icy austerity of Ms. Childs is a nearly impossible task; while she never crumbles, pushing ahead with rigor, her performance is slightly stiff.
In the final dance four couples return, and in this hypnotic celebration all of the elements converge as Beverly Emmons’s lighting washes the stage in blue or yellow; it’s as if she is recasting the live performers onto film. Here the singular brushstrokes form a whole, in which floating and careering bodies build to an explosive finale. If good design equals the sum of its parts, it’s no question that 30 years later “Dance” endures.
