On the Marks

The dances that have made choreographer Victoria Marks's reputation in the U.S. and in Britain over the past decade are kinetic kaleidoscopes where steps don't just happen, they hurtle, whiplash, whorl into wildness. The real rush is just below the rippling physicality, in Marks's incisive ideas about then and now, myth and reality, the hit-and-miss between men and women.

Marks has just been made director of choreography at the London Contemporary Dance School, and her most recent piece indicates the new punch she takes with her. Set in the minefield of the moment, that old male ego, This Way In began with Dick, a male duet updating Cain and Abel with the eponymous limb the sole protuberance not lashed—tongues included. The full-mast version sweeps through Genesis. "I object to the way some stories got told," Marks says. "I think things changed, like Eve getting blamed. Maybe Adam and Eve were having a wonderful sensual experience and Adam freaked out. He got scared of what he was feeling and blamed her."

O.S