Dance : Sander Co. Revels in Brute Power

Mehmet Memo Sander seems awfully keen on performing with his pants off. Aside from that tiresome quirk, the Turkish choreographer--who danced with his company at Highways last weekend--has developed a boldly personal style.

Call it the Body Brutalizing Technique, because it gives no quarter to niceties of phrasing and dynamics. Whomp! A guy drops abruptly to his knees. Bam! A backbend ends in a slamming fall. Feet in heavy boots or rubber shoes take heavy, angry steps.

Group dynamics look primitive but require trust and timing. Bodies butt each other in the chest and hurl themselves repeatedly into prone positions. Rolling bodies leap over each other at the last possible moment or jump on each other’s backs.

Seen Friday night, serenely statuesque Adrianna Thompson was as fearless as the three men, though Alan Panovich took top daredevil honors.

In “Action/Life,” bouts of abrupt activity are separated by blackouts and punctuated by Michael Black’s piece for violin and cello (performed by him and James Bigelow), which alternates cacophony with morsels of melody.

The dance equates life with dumbly monotonous action, leavened only by brute-level companionship and a blind trust in fate. Repeating a punishing unison routine 10 times, the dancers’ movements gradually blur as exhaustion takes over. At the end, each dancer briefly pantomimes a routine or obsessive gesture, joins in a jostling circle dance and hurtles bravely off stage.

“The Heart Has Its Reasons” opened with some gratuitous business involving a pair of toilet seats. But film footage of a beating heart and a pair of lips eventually provided the metaphoric impulse for Sander’s wracking torso movements, obsessive back-and-forth jumps and spastic gesticulations.

The program also included “Board Stiff”--a tour de force of hair-raising balances and leaps from a roughly 6-foot-square, 150-pound board manipulated by the dancers--and two rather self-indulgent, gay-themed works.