Larchaud Dance Project – Caution

by Paula Citron

I like when dance pushes boundaries. Jennifer Robichaud, artistic director of Larchaud Dance Project, tried to do that in her new show Caution. First of all, she and her colleagues created a throughline – that being Pandora and her box of horrors. Secondly, in her own choreography, Robichaud uses hip-hop as her basic vocabulary, and her urban/modern fusion is its own new dance hybrid.

Six choreographers contributed to Caution. Robichaud also used Nicole Bemister-Lardino as a narrator to give continuity, as well as a little girl dancer, Kacy Temple, to represent hope.

The choreographers met with varying degrees of success at addressing the idea of evil. Sometimes it just seemed like dance. Perhaps the most successful was Tracey Norman’s Gifted, a solo for Jesse Dell that looked at innocence forced into murky waters.

In the final analysis, the show had good dancers, particularly Mayumi Lashbrook, and did try to make a statement about the human condition. It was a solid evening of dance.

I’m Paula Citron, arts reviewer for THE NEW CLASSICAL 96.3 FM.