Dorian

Oscar Wilde’s novel about physical versus moral beauty is like an exquisite box holding a rather mundane gift. The gothic tale of a young man who remains beautiful while his portrait takes on the physical manifestations of his sins verges on the twin territories of moral fable and one-trick-ponydom. Only Wilde the storyteller and raconteur can transmute it into something more.

In translating Wilde’s tale to a dance opera set in the New York art scene of the 1980s, Rapley pulls a similar trick, replacing verbal intricacy with visual fireworks. Everything about this production looks gorgeous, from its elegant set to its exquisite costumes (designed by Collette Pollard and Debbie Baer, respectively). But the real star of the show is the dance. Rapley the choreographer constructs a potent visual vocabulary, one flexible enough to deliver both a psychological punch and a striking stage picture. Carefully treading the line between literal and abstract, he builds a solid narrative framework with plenty of space for the free play of imagination. And his finely tuned ensemble is right there with him, melding movement and emotion to startling effect.

And that spell holds, at least until the production opens its collective mouth. Rapley and Lobpries’s dialogue—often from Wilde’s novel—is rarely a logical extension of the dance. By saying too much, too definitively, it detracts from the rich mystery of Rapley’s visual iconography. Thankfully, these verbal distractions are sporadic, leaving one to revel in the far more sumptuous and evocative wordless portrait.—Kay Daly