It's best to forget that she's made out with Leonardo DiCaprio, Jared Leto, Matt Dillon, and Billy Crudup, and just enjoy Claire Danes in the new dance-theatre piece Edith & Jenny. The two-person show features the actor best known from My So-Called Life and dancer Ariel Rogoff Flavin (who is also a clinical social worker). Moreover, it's a family affair: Flavin's mother, Tamar Rogoff, is the choreographer, and Flavin and Danes have been best friends for two decades. Try as they all might, it's difficult to ignore the Golden Globe-toting elephant in the black box.
Edith & Jenny explores friendship and (sometimes Sapphic) love between these two real women and the titular characters. Rogoff uses clips from Danes' and Flavin's debut movies as children as the basis for the piece. In 1989, Jeffrey Mueller made two student films about incest: Coyote Mountain, with a young Flavin in the role of Jenny, and Dreams of Love, with Danes playing a character named Edith. For Rogoff's conflation of the films, a coterie of video artists and editors has spliced the original movies, which play in clips on three screens spread across the stage as Danes and Flavin dance in front of them. At moments the films dovetail into one, giving the appearance of the two friends together on screen as children (though they never were).
While Flavin is the dancer by training and Danes the actor, the star still ends up shining brighter. The dark-haired, fuller-bodied Flavin takes a softer approach to her performance. Danes' angular face and fat-free physique add to her strident performance style, and her commitment to the story is more overt than Flavin's.
Rogoff's piece is lovely in all of its honesty, never capitalizing on Danes' film-and-TV career or the sexuality of these two beautiful women. This sensual performance is presented with sincerity, integrity, and elegance -- performance elements that are often missing in the bawdy, ironic, and confrontational work found downtown. Edith & Jenny is a highly creative and fascinating duet -- even if Danes is merely a "so-called" dancer.
Presented by Performance Space 122 in association with Tamar Rogoff Performance Projects at Performance Space 122, 150 First Ave., NYC. Jan. 26-Feb. 4. Tue., Thu.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sat. and Sun., 5 p.m. (212) 352-3101 or www.theatermania.com.