Jesse Zarritt and Faye Driscoll in her YOU’RE ME, at ADF through the 25th. Photo Steven Schreiber.

I saw only five people walk out of the first of three performances by Faye Driscoll in Reynolds Theater as the American Dance Festival continues. I don’t know if that was the bigger surprise, or the fact the most of the mostly student audience laughed all the way through, and rose up clapping at the end. I was so bored I could barely sit through the performance; my companion described it as “excruciating.”

Although Driscoll’s You’re Me, which she dances along with Jesse Zarritt, tries really hard, it does not rise above the level of the sophomoric in its exploration of identity search and power balancing between (young) lovers. There is some good material in the piece, and several interesting physical sequences, but not 90 minutes worth. Probably 15 minutes of sincerity could be culled from all the manufactured artsiness. Maybe 30, if the two performers with the gorgeous bodies had actually danced, rather than teasing us with a few steps here and there.

At least these two don’t have a microphone, or any audio or video loops. They do not sink to the level of a Miguel Gutierrez hanging his butt over an open flame. They do however make an enormous mess of the stage, what with sneeze-inducing colored powders and pastes, feathers and assorted geegaws. Could the work’s deeper message be that everything gets trashed in love?

The program repeats the 24th and 25th.