Its images of female life in a tribal society -- where individual expression, much less individual freedom of action, is suppressed -- bloom from austere patterns and binding rhythms.
The Manhattan School of Music's contemporary ensemble Tactus was colorful in "Eight Lines," which folds acoustic instruments into the austere patterns of Mr. Reich's musical thought.
He opened it with skeletal acoustic-guitar songs: brief melodies that he sang in a thoughtful, private voice, threaded through austere patterns of plucked and trilled notes, backed by a percussionist tapping a calabash.
The elegant, austere patterns of "Victory Sausage" (USA) by computer graphics pioneer John Whitney Sr., eclipsed the other entries in the Music Visualization and Fine Art categories.
These paintings, consist ing of nothing but black stripes arranged in austere symmetrical patterns that echoed and re‐echoed the rec tangular shape of the canvas itself, were at once ex tremely provocative and re markably assured.
But then his austere geometric patterns yielded to a celebration accompanied by the contemporary African music of Fela Kuti.
In contrast to this drama, Bach's mathematical precision is translated into austere cerebral patterns that risk turning into a background for Mr. Woetzel's travails.
The only real stylistic shift comes in the 1950's and 60's, when Ermanno Toso, a member of the third generation, introduced square canes, thicker glass and more austere, nearly geometric patterns.
But the most interesting distinguishing characteristic is the hamon, or tempering line or pattern, an austere but purely decorative contrast in the tone of the metal extending along the blade.
Robert Garland's "New Bach" (2001) also takes a page from Balanchine's book, but here that great neo-classical choreographer's austere geometries and kaleidoscope patterns are disrupted by pelvis undulations and shoulder shimmies.
