Magic & mystery Everett Dance Theatre’s Science Project BY JOHNETTE RODRIGUEZ

Everett Dance Theatre’s The Science Project, last seen in Rhode Island in 1993, is back in town and it hasn’t lost any of its power to blow audiences away with its ingenious exploration of science and scientists through the medium of dance. Originally created in a collaborative process that involved artistic director Dorothy Jungels, musical director John Belcher and Everett’s four dancers — Walter Ferrero, Aaron Jungels, Rachael Jungels and Marvin Novogrodski — The Science Project has stayed the course and sailed into an era when its questions about scientific theories running aground in the shoals of politics may be even more relevant.

From the opening image (and sound) of water pouring off the fingers of three dancers into buckets below them, we know we are in for a ride with this troupe (with Bravell Smith taking over Ferrero’s role). It is a tour full of magic and mystery, as well as the awe and illumination. The Science Project sets up some classic demonstrations of scientific principles against a backdrop of music that includes Beethoven, Coltrane, the Gipsy Kings, and Astor Piazzola, all of it emotionally and physically stirring — there’s always dance surrounding or involving the props.

Arguably the most seamless sequence of integrating these props with dance is the graceful suite with white volleyball-sized spheres and two-railed tracks of aluminum tubing on which the balls seem to dance. These tracks are handled easily and lightly by the dancers, like extended arms or long wings, dipping and soaring in directions that almost make the balls float along them. With the flick of a wrist, a ball can hop to another track and fly up its length, only to run back down as the track evens out.

Intermittently, the bodies of the dancers become the tracks, with scores of variations on whether the balls roll along two arms or two legs from the same dancer or from two different dancers. But the balls don’t stop there. They find the slant of a torso or the curve of a back and neck to slide along and the top of a head to bounce off. The dancers’ timing is impeccable, as the four move around, under, and over each other, always putting a hand or a limb out to catch or guide the ball.

In another sequence, a ladder is set up with three sections of a trough down which a cup on a saucer flies and is caught, despite the (intentional) collapsing of the troughs to the floor halfway down. The second or third time this is accomplished, the visual joke of eight plates rolling out from the wings to clatter along with the cups and saucers is hilarious.

That playfulness is mirrored in the dancers’ backward skips, their quick takes on Latin dance steps, their fast-paced glides across the stage, in which one dancer is pulled along the floor until he (or she) tumbles into a somersault and springs up to grab hold of two other dancers, who may then drag the fourth across the floor again. That lighter tone is also heard in Novogrodski’s snippets of memoir, such as a listing of his grandparents’ knickknacks: plastic flamingos, a porcelain deer head, a felt decal on the fridge, saying "Holy Cow, Are You Eating Again?"

But each bit of what looks like harmless inventiveness in The Science Project could go wrong, very wrong. Take that heavy wrecking ball that Novogrodski lets swing out and back toward his face. Or that bed of nails on which Aaron Jungels lies flat, another bed of nails on his abdomen, then two bricks and a small board, which Smith breaks in two.

The idea of unpredictable ramifications from scientific research is picked up in the text spoken by the dancers, especially the commentary about and by J. Robert Oppenheimer and, at one point, by Marie Curie. Oppenheimer, we are told, thought the beauty of science should be taught as well as its practical applications. Concerning the latter, he wrote extensively about his guilt in helping to develop the atomic bomb. After he was called before the House Un-American Activities Committee because of his postwar anti-nuke warnings, Oppenheimer’s reputation was destroyed: "Il eté ruiné," says one of the dancers.

The Science Project is like a true science project, in which you only understand the implications of the questions it poses after you’ve looked at the various elements — text, music, movement, lighting, props, and actual experiments — and thought about the ways in which they refer to and explain each other. Setting out large prisms along a light beam and then smaller prisms along the resulting beams while diffracting Oppenheimer’s life and opinions is one small example.

A larger, overarching symbol for this dance theater piece is the balancing act of the four dancers on a large seesaw. It’s not just that they hold flowers while they do it (the "beauty" in science); it’s that they maintain their equilibrium when one of them jumps off the end. The balancing act of collaboration and a leap of faith by Everett Dance Theatre have resulted in the fabulous piece that is The Science Project.

The Science Project will be performed on March 26, April 1, and 2 at 8 p.m. at the Carriage House Stage, 7 Duncan Avenue, Providence.Call (401) 831-9479.