Monica Bill Barnes & Company perform EVERYTHING IS GETTING BETTER ALL THE TIME. That’s Barnes front left, with the smile and the soaring lines. Photo: Christopher Duggan, courtesy of ADF.

Monica Bill Barnes might be called the Sandra Bullock of contemporary dance. She’s strong, agile and good-looking, with a high-wattage smile. She radiates good health, cheer, and curiosity; displays a wacky sense of physical humor, and she just seems so darned nice that you can’t help but enjoy her gags and pratfalls. Her sincerity is so apparent that one wouldn’t think to question it. This artist doesn’t protect herself with ramparts of concept, philosophy or satire or mystifying ambiguity. She makes dance stories about her life and her work and her feelings (of which pleasure at living in a human body is one). In doing so, she entertains while touching on vital emotions and sensations, and she does it in a very female way. Maybe the better film comparison here is to the late comic screenwriter Nora Ephron.

READ THE FULL REVIEW, PUBLISHED 7-3-12, ON CVNC.

Got ta got ta, my my my…MBB&Co. try a little tenderness in the all-Otis extravaganza, EVERYTHING IS GETTING BETTER ALL THE TIME. Photo: Christopher Duggan, courtesy ADF.