September 6, 2002

A Theater Student Uses Dance to Respond to Tragedy

By SUSANNAH TULLY

In the aftermath of September 11, a group of theater-arts students from the University of California at Santa Cruz felt like dancing. Specifically, the nine-member company created a combination dance-drama performance piece called Ragesties, composed of a series of 10 "dance poems." Using the methods of a Japanese dance form called ankoku butoh, or "dance of darkness," the bluntly named poems -- among them, "The Morning," "The Collapse," and "The Rubble" -- are performed with