I know guys who would roll their eyes and groan of 33 Fainting Spells’ latest dance/theater creation that it’s “a chick piece.” In Maria the Storm Cloud three women dance, sing, gesture, fidget, and talk about their feelings. No males. No blatant virtuosity and, especially, no explosions. Sure, it’s possible to dig beyond the obvious, to conjecture that Maria addresses universal themes—maybe lost childhood or pre-pubescent idealism. But these tangents inevitably dead-end. After a full evening, Maria resonates about as deeply as an episode of Gidget Grows Up.

Maria the Storm Cloud

33 Fainting Spells

On the Boards

December 3

Local company 33 Fainting Spells (unrelated psychic sisters Dayna Hanson and Gaelen Hanson, who are joined for Maria by Peggy Piacenza) has been producing critically acclaimed dance/theater work since 1994, with grants and commissions from coast to coast. Maria was co-commissioned by On the Boards and New York’s Dance Theater Workshop, and supported by a $21,000 National Dance Project grant from the New England Foundation for the Arts. After last weekend’s performance, 33 Fainting Spells will take Maria on a 13-city US tour.

Like other 33 Fainting Spells repertory, Maria the Storm Cloud is psychologically and emotionally motivated, dramatic, and image-based; it also straddles a fine line between literal representation and abstraction. The title is a literary reference to author Natalia Ginzberg, whose mother called her that name when she was moody. Without a specific story, the work couldn’t be called narrative. Yet with props, costumes, and music loaded with cultural reference—reminiscent of ’50s and ’60s TV sit-coms—Maria can’t help suggesting mini-stories. Before turning to choreography, Dayna wrote what she calls “image-based” fiction, examining and describing the minutiae of a situation; this scenic sensibility permeates Maria.

The work begins with the trio standing coyly behind mikes, naked except for flat cut-out blue clouds, chewing gum, grinning, and pointing to their name tags. It ends with a Motown-esque act set to Jimmie Rogers’ guitar folk song “It’s Over.” The connecting thread between these two extremes weaves haphazardly through 18 situations—a few gems interspersed with so-so baubles seemingly thrown in as filler. Twenty different musical excerpts ranging in style from Verdi arias to Plug’s “Drum-n-Bass for Papa” subdivide the evening. The episodic effect is schizophrenic but intriguing—kind of like leafing through a stranger’s photo album and making up stories to suit each tableau. But is there a “big picture”?

The opportunity for interpretation is one aspect of 33’s work that’s easy to appreciate. In one section of Maria, the cast flails and dashes for the kinesthetic rush; in another they slowly swivel on short revolving stools, bodies slumped with hair-obscured faces. In the current world of mostly adrenaline-jagged dance, to be given the space to see, register, contemplate, and interpret an image is a relief. Yet as much as this opportunity is laudable, abrupt transitions between scenes create an unsatisfying lurching tempo. Imagine leafing through that stranger’s photo album while pages keep falling out.

The most vivid moments aren’t the dance sequences per se, but the theatrical movement: an inebriated Gaelen tossing back martini shots from her shoes; Dayna drawing a red marker heart on her blank name tag; all three leafing through magazines and sipping coffee in the shadow of skylights (wonderful lighting throughout by Lara Wilder).

Movement is the air 33 Fainting Spells breathes. Talking sections, however, present a problem. Piacenza is a natural cutup as the saltine-addicted agent to Dayna’s nervous singer, but in this speaking role, she’s still a dancer trying hard to be an actor. The discrepancy between her sophisticated dancing and her relatively untrained speaking voice is jarring. I’m not suggesting that dancers should never speak on stage, but those who do should consider training their voices as diligently as they train their bodies.

At times, Maria seems to have no reason to exist other than the dancers’ desire for an audience, which leaves open the question of 33’s intent. After a while, the “Watch me, see what I can do!” wears thin. When it works, only in small doses, this childlike exuberance lends Maria a refreshing spontaneity and joyousness that’s lacking in much ultraserious, ultraself-conscious post-modern dance. Trouble is, Maria’s cast members struggle to sustain their own suspension of disbelief. We can’t tell whether the performers are mocking hypochondria and melodrama, whether they’re affirming it, or—and I hope this isn’t the case—whether they can’t tell the difference or don’t care. This ambiguity makes Maria more compelling than a chick dance, but just barely.