http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/19/arts/dance/review-welcome-home-a-1970s-flashback-on-governors-island.html 2016-09-18 22:47:02 Review: ‘Welcome Home,’ a 1970s Flashback on Governors Island This dance and photography work by Colleen Thomas conveys a sense of what her family’s life was like on the island four decades ago. === Technically, it wasn’t her childhood home. But in the case of And still, it was a homecoming. On Friday afternoon, an intimate audience was ushered into building 10A in Her husband, Bill Young, a dancer and choreographer, appeared in the work, along with her mother, Kathy Stephens, and her father, Jim Stephens, who greeted audience members in a nook labeled “Dad’s Room” where he discussed his photography and pointed to — via a window — the building they once lived in. (Stephens is Ms. Thomas’s maiden name; Thomas, a name from a previous marriage, is what she uses professionally.) “Welcome Home” had its share of sweet moments, yet it wasn’t as innocent as its title suggested. Adolescence is filled with anguish, and Ms. Thomas, in her better choreographic moments, illuminated the pain and pleasure of a young girl becoming a woman in fleeting scenes, as when the dancer Jessica Stroh grappled with balance and instability in near darkness. Was she floating? But the teasingly combative duets for Ms. Thomas and Darrin Wright, conceivably a stand-in for her brother, wore thin. Yes, brothers and sisters fight. What else? Mr. Stephens’s photography was on display in multiple rooms, and doors featured signs that announced: “Keep Out!” Written on a chalkboard in the upstairs hallway was “I broke up with my first boyfriend here.” Those signs of Ms. Thomas’s early days — or any young girl’s — were more evocative than intermittent movement passages that ranged from a frenzy of flailing limbs to social dancing. Her father’s Super 8 films, shown on monitors scattered throughout the house — Jason Akira Somma is credited with video design — were affecting, showing how, even in grainy black and white, a space collects memories. Clearly, the setting evoked the past, yet as we moved from room to room — standing under spider plants or leaning against walls with peeling paint — this homecoming, heavy on nostalgia, was more of a house tour than a dance.