Watch From Here Part II
The first piece was a solo titled Silt choreographed and performed by Rachel Barker. There were large lengths of crumpled white paper draped from the ceiling that ran up and down stage as well as large piles of the same long paper on the ground. Video accompanied the dancing. There were three rotating clips of a flock of birds flying, moving water, and rocks projected onto the paper. As the piece moved on, the papers were un clipped from the ceiling on one end at varying intervals so that they fell to be hanging straight up and down. Once this happened, the video transitioned from broad projection to clips of film projected on a single hanging piece of paper. The soundscape sat in the background and was not very memorable. The use of the paper was very interesting but as it was unclipped and fell, the dancer moved through the hanging pieces and it became difficult at times to see what was going on. While it can be interesting to have the audience experience different things based on where they are sitting, that should not mean that part of the audience should have their view entirely blocked for chunks of time. There were parts of the dance where she interacted physically with the paper. It seemed as though she had a set idea of where she wanted to move the paper but not quite how to manipulate it based on the different ways it may fall each time so it seemed like she was “breaking character” a bit to get the paper to move how she wanted it to. The idea of the piece was very interesting as a whole and I like the mixing of medias, but I wish I had been able to see more of what was going on throughout the piece.
The second piece was Laminated Glass by Mihwa Koo. The title of the piece was explained in the program, elaborating, “Laminated Glass is a type of windshield that consists of two layers of glass. Together, the individual transparent layers create a sense of singularity.” The explanation continues on to say that the work explores a similar concept through duets. It was a six-member piece that started with a dancer sweeping the floor. I appeared as though she was just clearing the floor from the first piece for the next dancers but she transitioned into a run and was joined by the rest of the cast. They ran behind the risers, around the curtain on the upstage wall, out the door to the stairs on either upstage corner of the space, and all around but staying in a circle. There were times when one dancer would go behind something and another dancer would come out the other side but the steps and sound would not have changed in the process. I really liked that particular part. After the running section, the dancers came into the space. There were many times when two people or groups were on opposite corners of the stage and it made it difficult to see them both at the same time. There was s time when two of the dancers were in opposite corners, each standing in a small square of light, and I really like the use of lighting but they were still too far away to se eat the same time. There were points in the piece where it became very hard to see any inspiration from duets. There was a lot of trio work throughout the piece and that caused the meaning behind the piece to become blurred. There were also parts of the piece that seemed to simply need more rehearsal. In all, the piece seemed to need a little more time to be performance ready.
The last piece was a trio called Les Fouves (The Wild Beast) by Tammy Carrasco. The piece was a trio and drew inspiration from artists that used “abstracted literal representation through unconventional uses of bold, contrasting colors to emphasize the artist’s voice and personal expression.” This contrast was brought out through the performers by using changing between silence and sound, sometimes in humorous ways, in particular the choice of using a Prince song in the soundtrack. The space was used very well. The dancers at one point slammed into a door on the wall and then danced back out into the space, which created an interesting visual shift in the floor pattern. In all the piece was interesting and point humorous because of the use of contrast but I desired for there to be a point of extremity, either in stillness or complete chaos, to create a wider frame of reference for the overall movement because the amount of contrast that was created a sort of stagnation (the constant use of difference makes it feel the same because it is the same choice).
