Mimulus Dance Company Opens Jacob's Pillow Season Nancy Palmieri for The New York Times Mimulus Dance Company, with, from left, Fabiana Dias, Nayane Diniz and Alexandre Tadra, at the Jacob's Pillow festival in Becket, Mass. BECKET, Mass. - Not to steal the Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival's thunder on the opening night of its 80th-anniversary season, but as the Pillow presented its first concert, by Mimulus Dance Company of Brazil, on Wednesday, I kept thinking of its slightly younger counterpart, the American Dance Festival in North Carolina. Specifically, I was reminded of a destined-to-become-infamous incident from 1984, when the choreographer Mark Morris rose from the audience during a performance of Twyla Tharp's "Nine Sinatra Songs," yelled "No more rape!" and exited the theater. Mr. Morris's response to the stylized violence (in "That's Life," a woman in evening wear is flung about and manhandled by her tux-wearing companion) sounded over the top when I first read about it. But since then I have watched far too many performances that have featured the brutal handling of women - always artfully cloaked, of course. Unfortunately, this ugly phenomenon hasn't subsided, and there it was again on Wednesday, during the American premiere of "Por um Fio" ("By a Thread"). The four women in the nine-member ensemble are repeatedly in chokeholds, their muscular male partners handling them by their necks as they move through athletic combinations infused by social dance traditions. The men almost always are leading throughout this hourlong dance, manipulating their willing partners like so many pieces of virtuosic clay. They grasp the women's faces at times, with palms and fingers settling like masks. As the men sling and hoist their partners about, the women's bodies go to extremes: either appearing rigid, or limp as rag dolls. At other times they respond by kicking and struggling, but never with real resistance. And yet "Por um Fio" (2009) - choreographed by the company's artistic director, Jomar Mesquita, in collaboration with the dancers - isn't, it seems, a commentary about violence toward women, or if it is, it's done so subtly so as not to register. Instead, dishearteningly, this violence is woven into the choreographic phrases on a structural level - and these phrases are seductive, slinky and muscular and executed by powerfully sleek performers. The variety of movement styles is delicious: Tango and samba tangle with the Lindy hop, to name a few. Rhythms shift and jostle, moving through subtle variations. The score, which jumps from track to track like a Latin-inspired iTunes party mix, is less captivating. A handsome duet by Mr. Mesquita and Juliana Macedo is particularly striking for its deft shifts in register. Still, this mix of social dances, blended and repackaged for the concert stage, is by now a familiar formula, in contrast to the oeuvre of the man who inspired its creation: Arthur Bispo do Rosário, who spent five decades in a mental institution in Rio de Janeiro, creating what has since been recognized as a masterly body of mixed-media work. He did not, apparently, even think of himself as an artist. Mr. Bispo do Rosário created feverishly, working with whatever materials were at hand. Ed Andrade's set design includes a bramblelike tangle: hanging lights and two tapestries decorated with markings and string suspended behind the dancers, and sometimes incorporated into the movements. The installation pays tribute to Mr. Bispo do Rosário, as do the rotating costumes (by Mr. Mesquita's mother, Baby Mesquita), which are variously patchwork, decorated with bright pieces of fringe and scrawled over with words. Yet the combination of these elements (and the dance itself), is conventional. If Mr. Bispo do Rosário and other self-taught artists are to be saddled with the ridiculous "outsider" label, we might as well refer to works like "Por um Fio" as insider art. And we might wonder why, the Mark Morrises of this world aside, we complicit audience members seem perfectly content to applaud male hands locked around female necks. Despite the many elements at play in "Por um Fio," and no matter how innocent the intentions of its makers, it is this insidious image that stands out. We claim to be against it in life - yet on our screens and stages, we accept it all too willingly. "Por um Fio" continues through Sunday at Jacob's Pillow, which runs through Aug. 26 in Beckett, Mass.; (413) 243-0745, jacobspillow.org.