http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/06/arts/dance/jillian-peas-polly-pocket-expansion-pack-at-danspace.html 2014-10-05 21:55:08 Jillian Peña’s ‘Polly Pocket: Expansion Pack’ at Danspace In Jillian Peña’s “Polly Pocket: Expansion Pack” at Danspace Project dancers mirror one another in a seemingly self-contained realm. === “I feel like I already have it all, don’t I?” Andrew says to Alex. “You’d tell me if there was something I was missing, right?” At this point in Much like the toy from which the piece takes its name — miniature plastic dolls in a miniature foldout house — their world is a kind of airtight pod we can peer into, sectioned off from ours by a low white wall along the front of the space and white curtains on either side. They have fuel (a water cooler), and they’ll need it. Time unfolds relentlessly here, a limitless resource, marked by a steady stream of precise steps, ballet steps especially, and the dancers’ methodical counting. “331. 332. 333,” they chime, as they orbit each other in one whirling passage. “Butts. Kick. Heels. Splits,” they proclaim, rising up into back-to-back headstands. When the counting drops out, the iridescent score, full of cyclical plunking and chanting, takes over. Sequestered though that world is, it’s uncannily inviting. Ms. Peña establishes a hypnotic rhythm and momentum, interrupted by occasional jokes (or are they?) that gather as those two selves, or one, begin to divide and multiply. Control passes back and forth between Andrew and Alex, more often in her hands, literally, as when she spins him in an arabesque and otherwise inverts ballet’s traditional gender roles. She is the first to unveil a gift: six identical Andrews, projected on the back wall, which he giddily accepts. There is more of him, more to have, than he thought. He reciprocates, introducing Kyli (Kyli Kleven), their almost-triplet, who ultimately begets 18 more doppelgängers, a procession of dancers — real, not projected, at least not in the technological sense — bounding across the room. That final parade needed more rehearsal. But it left the mind churning with questions about the self and the body and what it takes to make them feel complete.