What could account for the extraordinary run on tickets for the British dance group Michael Clark & Company at the Brooklyn Academy’s Next Wave Festival? Partly it’s that they were booked into BAM’s intimate Lepercq Space; but mostly it was the media blitz that preceded them. Clark, whose style is often described in the press as “post-punk,” is a publicist’s dream. His shaved head, blackened lips, and tutu-clad body enliven the pages of countless glossy magazines—most startlingly in an ad for another British import, Rose’s lime juice, where he can be seen reclining, odalisque-fashion, at the feet (more precisely, between the legs) of pre-punk danseuse Ann Miller.

Watching Clark’s ninety-minute offering, No Fire Escape in Hell, I was struck by how difficult it is to be outrageous today, when virtually everything that can be done onstage already has been. If one is young enough, however, and therefore has a limited dance-viewing experience, one might indeed be led to believe that what one is doing is original and even shocking. Clark was born in 1962, the same year the Judson Dance Theatre presented its first concert, generally considered to mark the birth of what came to be known as “postmodern” dance, and the catalogue of devices he avails himself of in No Fire Escapereads like a primer of Sixties experimental dance: nudity and sexual imagery; a rock score interspersed with snatches of speech; costumes with strategically placed holes or incongruous objects dangling from them; men partnering