Dancers caught in the rat race

dance

By Sara G. Levin

Draped in a circus-like atmosphere, “Dancing vs. The Rat Experiment,” dresses up the old cliché of the rat race and reinterprets it within the context of a scientific experiment. The show, choreographed by Dan Safer, includes a recording from a real 1962 documentary about overpopulation in rats. Overcrowding seems to have a very negative effect on rodent psyches, says the voiceover, and as Safer tries to show, it impacts humans, too.

As audience members enter the theater, all eight performers lie languidly on blue towels in big white underwear and garters reminiscent of days of yore. They flip through magazines, basking in the sun of a square track of lights hung overhead.

But then the lights shut off and a rumble emerges from behind the audience. One man, with a white-painted face and red-rimmed eyes, stands up and looks around as the floor begins to shake. The experiment begins.

Everyone furiously pulls on clothes — colorful tutus, ruffled shirts — as if dressing for a state fair. Each shirt has a number on the back. As the soundtrack races through rock-n-roll, Thai techno, country music, and samba, a mysterious wire lowers a bucket with food and beer. Chaos ensues. A woman beats her baby with a baseball bat; a man almost kills another man because he spills beer on the floor. All this occurs in a schizophrenic melee of moods and music that turn love into hate and trust into mistrust at the drop of a hat. Thus concludes “Part One.”

“Part Two” switches to the survival contest. Although there is absolutely no dancing in this half, the set-up is pretty funny. In order to avoid elimination, each person must complete ridiculous tasks dictated by a mysterious voice, like “find a red ping-pong ball among thousands of white ones, in a state of total panic and terror.”

Sadly, the point Safer seems to be making — that overcrowding causes us to behave as badly as territorial rats — isn’t convincing. It’s his surreal sound effects, costumes and make-up that give a longer-lasting impression of eerie disquiet than the actual subject.

“Dancing vs. The Rat Experiment” is at LaMama E.T.C. Annex Theater through November 12, (212-475-7710; www.lamama.org).