Though the dancers unspool long phrases of movement, the piece feels disappointingly thin.
"I would establish a focal point -- a dancer, a phrase of movement, an event -- and build more dancing around it.
The structure of "Horse's Mouth" is fixed: a participant relates a personal anecdote and then performs a standing phrase of movement, set or improvised, for 16 counts.
In rehearsal, Eiko affectionately teased Ms. Halprin, telling her not to think about doing a phrase of movement to the right and then the left.
Mr. Zullo's memory triptych ended with "project Xiii," based on a 60-second phrase of movement featuring 12 solo variations; the final minute highlighted the performers repeating their variations all together.
"The dance-like continuity she gives her gestures and mime scenes - all the actions of the stage business imbedded in phrases of movement, but each action so lightly started it seemed when it happened a perfectly spontaneous one.
Mr. Marrie turned a cardboard role into a major one; his Petruchio was complex, with stretched-out phrases of movement that suddenly changed direction or tempo, the equivalent of asides to the audience.
Morris helped him figure out how it was put together; its components are a limited number of phrases of movement, executed over and over, with small variations, at different speeds and with different dynamics.
The piece, which will be danced at the Hayward once a week, involves a four-and-a-half-minute phrase of movement, performed in a studiedly neutral fashion with dancer or dancers averting their eyes from the audience.
Initially, it's the choreography's responses to the rhythm and vocal music that are most striking: moments where the force of Tempest's quasi-rap delivery sends a current of spiking energy through the dancers' footwork, or where passages of more melodious lyricism float them on longer phrases of movement.
