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| Silas Riener standing on Rashaun Mitchell. Photo: Stephanie Berger |
Title applies to:
- The dancers relating to one another
- Their interior (mental) and exterior (physical)
- Facial emoting vs. felt emotion
- Portions of the body in different actions, like the old game of "exquisite corpse"
- The dancers and the audience
- Our reaction to their performance
- The projections of spliced halves of two dancers' faces
- The graphic b/w set panels abutting one another
- All elements converging in that space at that time
The dance:
- Rashaun Mitchell, Melissa Toogood, Cori Kresge, and Silas Riener all danced with Cunningham. These alumni are a uniquely talented, ready pool of superdancers now dispersing throughout myriad performances. Seize on chances to see these great artists.
- The dancers make various faces indicative of different emotions. Do they feel how they look?
- Start: they stand in four corners of the white marley like boxers in a ring, shoulders skew, then limbs jut out at angles
- They converge in the center, reaching up like children stretching
- Mitchell is pulled in a split by the others; he runs around the perimeter and sometimes hides and watches from the edge
- Near the end, one dancer carries two others; they alternate roles
- Facing outward, they circle, link elbows, and rotate in a circle, making exaggerated faces
- A remarkable site-specific work using BAC's windowed theater
- She unties her long hair, which drapes over her face most of the solo
- Seated in a pike, she shudders violently, pulls her legs into a butterfly, and tickles her feet with her hair
- Kicks and stomps desperately
- The others crawl under the painted set panels almost as if to take refuge from her fury
- Mitchell grabs her ankles and spins her, face down, in circles, faster, until only her hands are brushing the ground
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| The choreographer, pulled every which way. Photo: Stephanie Berger |
- Folds his arms into triangles and holds them next to his head, like wings
- Contorts his face in varying emotions
- One leg folded into a rétiré, he rises glacially on the other (magnificent) foot, pulling himself taut vertically
- Stepping forward and then back, he arches backward dangerously deeply
- He pushes through splits, showing more remarkable flexibility
- The inventive site-specific visual design is by Mitchell with Fraser Taylor and Davison Scandrett (who also designed the lighting)
- Taylor designed the b/w silkscreen rectangular prints that slide like barn doors alternate with exposed windows on two walls of the Gilman Space at BAC
- Video by Nicholas O'Brien is projected on the windows: spliced faces, animated biomorphic shapes
- Music by Thomas Arsenault, mixed live, varies from moos to rumbles to bells
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