"Wendy Jehlen is a captivating choreographer, with sharp musical sensibilities, an affinity for the natural integration of modern and world dance styles, and a deep sensitivity to the connections between human body movements and moods.

Set to a delicious assemblage of world music, in which soothing landscapes of sounds are peppered with punchy rhythms, "Forest" opens with the dancers clumped into a gnarled shape that suggests an ancient tree. Out of the tree emerges Jehlen, as a butterfly, dancing a blend of contemporary movement and classical Indian vocabulary with elegant weight, strength, and pounding rhythms, evocative of some sort of feisty forest creature.

As the work proceeds, the dancers become abstractions of other woods inhabitants, including at one point what appear to be feral cats, which stalk suspensefully and then battle it out in an exciting capoeira duet. An intriguing mound, made by one dancer draped on top of another, grows gorgeously into a tall tree. A quintet of spunky "four-legged" animals scampers about, creating a delightful musical episode out of the slapping sounds made by their feet and hands against the stage floor. Jehlen's choreography makes extensive use of inverted movement, in which the arms are the weight-bearing limbs and the legs serve gestural functions.

(Forest's) ravishing lighting (by Pradhuman Nayak and Lynda Reiman) keeps it visually engaging throughout."

-Backstage, July 2010