In Isaiah Zagar’s mosaic garden on South Street, dancers perilously climbed and danced off walls of embedded bottles and ceramics in the early evening, when subtle lighting added a mysterious glow to the performance.

Tide. Choreographed by Myra Bazell and Madison Cario. Presented by Scrap Performance Group, September 10-13, 2008 at Zagar’s Magic Garden, 1020 South St. (215) 917-3367 or http://www.scrap-performance.org.

Energy vs. environment on South Street

Directed by Myra Bazell and Madison Cario, this Fringe Festival work-in-progress led an audience through the magical spaces of Isaiah Zagar’s ceramic mosaic garden on the 1000 block of South Street. The dance piece, the last segment of which was first seen at the University of the Arts inauguration of its current president, has an environmental theme— which might have been too obliquely referenced in the current version, where the extraordinary site of Zagar’s work is so overwhelming.

The piece allowed for personal narratives between the performers and this art environment, formed and re-cycled out of the flotsam and jetsam of urban life. Dancers perilously climbed and danced off walls of embedded bottles and ceramics in the early evening when subtle lighting added a mysterious glow to the performance.

A dreamy song about an affection for Copenhagen— the spit tobacco, not the city— offered a darker edge to the dance, perhaps an element that could have been developed elsewhere. The environmental theme tended to get lost amid the energized movements occurring in the confined spaces of the garden.

The fine cast of dancers included Marie Brown, Lindsay Browning, John Luna, Shannon Murphy, Sara Kamara Yassky and the extraordinary Katherine Livingston, a founding member of Scrap and past dancer with Zero Moving Dance Company.