Members of Susan Marshall & Company.  Members of Susan Marshall
& Company. ( Susan Marshall & Company / March 8, 2013)  If Plato
had ever pondered the ideal of pop music, "Play/Pause" might
have been it. Susan Marshall's seductive, disturbing world-
premiere sextet, stripped bare as her stage, mines the essence
of a tradition that defines Western culture in our time. Who can
forget the rock concert, the club show, the dance party that
literally rocked their world?  Not that "Play/Pause," performed
this weekend at the Dance Center of Columbia College, is always
blissed out—far from it—despite the onstage presence of three
musicians playing David Lang's sometimes raucous, sometimes
tender score. The first 10 or 15 minutes in particular are tough
going. The merciless lighting, harsh as supermarket
fluorescents, flattens the two Susan Marshall & Company dancers
onstage, audibly ripping black tape off a roll, sticking it on a
big ugly plywood square, then "drawing" on it with a microphone
that picks up every thump