Ornate Persona

<p><br></p><p>Moving dramatically inward from her immense geographic and forensic terrain-Jeanine Stevens investigates Modernist dance film painting collage masquerade and psychology in <em>Ornate Persona.</em> She distills her gifts as a lyric anthropologist in this her most introspective collection thus far. We sense that she's investigating her own psyche even while handling such themes as a Nijinsky ballet. Her associative dance leads us fluidly from poem to poem as she empathizes with the gifted ill-fated Tanaquil Le Clercq celebrated dancer and muse to George Balanchine: it is the ballet Afternoon of a Faun which unites Nijinsky and Tanaquil across the decades in Stevens' mind. And we become one body with Nijinsky himself admiring our own sinew. My Egyptian eyes lacquered hair / body taped / like a character doll. Was it a dream feathering down my neck / or just thoughts leaf points growing / from the green felt skullcap?</p><p>Stevens' power to captivate guides us from a Joseph Cornell box to familiar 20<sup>th</sup>-century masterworks like the film <em>Black Orpheus</em> then to the mysterious series of mandalas created by Carl Jung's patient Miss X. Stevens' poetry keeps us reading thinking and feeling. </p><p><br></p><p>-Tom Goff author <em>Twelve-Tone Row: Music in Words.</em></p>