The Village Voice

11/20/01

By Roslyn Sulcas

Scott Rink’s dance plays, “On His Deathbed, Holding Your Hand” and “Of Melodrama And Murder (ATA Theater, September), are an unusual hybrid genre in which dance is part of the larger theatrical whole.  In the new “Deathbed,” a dying man’s monologue about his virulent hatred for his son seeps like poisonous mist over Rink, Lenna Parr, and Deborah Abramson, who alternately incarnate medics and family.  A slow crouching solo for Rink as the newborn in a wrinkled, translucent skin extends into and out of a lyrical duo with Parr.  As words float over them, the dance slowly evokes the unspoken: man and wife, mother and son, the dream of intimacy, the pain of solitude.  Rink’s strength is to leave this all implied.