More soon…

The lights come up on a lone piano in a spot light. Monstah Black, as a sultry crooner, sings over his shoulder, directly to us.  It is an invitation that says, “Hey, lean forward, listen up. You, audience, are part of this show; we are together here inside the space of performance, let’s see how it unfolds.”

What unfolds is an exuberant hybrid of contemporary, folk and popular dance, musical theatre, spoken word, spoof, camp and vamp and a pinch of everything else.  The company weaves through the audience, the lights rise and fade and the spell is woven.

The penultimate section, Lena, danced with mesmerizing power by Lisa Race, brought the evening into focus.  In the program notes, Deb Cash calls Nicholas Leichter’s Whiz  a study in reflection and refraction. Lena was the mirror for the show. All that was extroverted, relational and narrative in the show was transformed in Lena to a powerful interiority. Movements originated in the torso, limbs were contained. Race moved as one fluid entity, without flourish or distractions. A verse from the Tao Te Ching says, We shape clay into a pot, but it is the empty space inside that gives the pot its purpose.We work with being, but non-being is what we use.

First impressions:  Precision and fluidity. Stillness and staccato bursts. Prosaic gesture and polished execution.  Bodies round, bodies angular.  Bodies in flight and bodies grounded.

Images that linger with me:

From The City of Rain: There is a blue cast to the stage.  The dancers attention is indrawn. They are moving in unison, appear crouched in mid-air, suspended and compact. Then half the dancers drop to the floor and the others rise up like startled birds.  No longer discrete dancers, they have become pure, abstract movement and shape.

From The Groove to Nobody’s Business: The dancers are subway passengers waiting for a train. Interactions are inevitable, especially with Ray Charles’  “What’d I Say” pulsing in the background. Subtle gestures, a smirk, a dip of the shoulder, counterpoint exuberant contact and mock conflict – the human comedy as on display every day. And with joy.

More soon about the show and the post performance discussion.

Marion