Diavolo Dances Salonan

I first encountered the Diavolo Dance Theatre a few years ago and was blown away by
What I saw. I was blown away again at the Hollywood Bowl on Sept. 4 when Jacque Heim put his dancer/gymnasts through their paces to a new piece by Essa-Pecka Salonan.
Center stage was a huge cube out of which writhing hands then heads then bodies emerged. The cube was eventually split into three parts and configured various ways to tell a story of birth, discovery, love, sex, war, then retreat back into the cube.  The dancers showed remarkable skill in throwing themselves about. One mistake and it would have been a disaster. Jacque Heim’s choreography also has a sense of danger and
Wonder and delivered a masterful event.
Salonan rounded out the evening with Mahler’s First Symphony a fitting counterpoint to the dance before. The music is full of changing tempi and moods and the Phil played very well and the crowd loved it.