Kinesphere

I am watching a performance of modern dance. Can anybody even define that term anymore without dropping into the science, the belabored recall of names or the creators of specific movements that defined time in the art of dance? I’ve seen modern performances before, repeat creations, resurrected, but something always happens to magic once it’s been buried six feet under and dug up: it ossifies into wood. Modern dance has been a sign of our age, that of an emerging art form gone down the established path of the aging minds that created it, while the precocious art envisioned in the eyes of the tireless feasting bodies of those with nodes of energy pulsing through them from limb to limb simply dies unseen, or fused in conformities.

So never willing to deny a new phase of evolution, like the hope of seeing a dormant mountain spring to life with sparks in the air, I went on campus at the University of Utah, dodged the parking booths guarding the empty parking lot in front of the Marriott Center for Dance, overcame the competition to find free parking and went to see Kinesphere: a collection of the senior student compositions, which I will discover to be inspired, raw movement choreographed by fervent minds. The price — two bucks at the door. 

Walking up into the unknown territory of the Marriott Center, I am paced through the rectangular halls by encouraging signs. I feel wanted as a stranger, welcome to enter an atmosphere created for the show. Before I am even in the performance room, I sense the missing tension given off by the tight clothes and snotty sophistication that always makes me feel guilty, convicted for showing up late at professional dance performances. And then the mood conjured up by those coaxing signs is reflected in the sensitive face that asks me to take off my shoes and enjoy the show. Just the thought of an entire theater of shoeless people allowed me to join the standing room only crowd already feeling a strand of connectivity. 

The program I received and set folded on my lap, I am going into this blind, no preconceived notions to mislead me, no flattering approvals from a single soul in the land I am visiting. What I am looking for is something that induces a metamorphosis, taking me from the place that I am to a place that I’ve never been. I want to be pulled in deep. Seduce me, not with sex alone but with a movement that is all absorbing – not just following the music, but adding layers of moody rhythms that are not even there but maybe could be if the music was afforded such chaotic intuition. 

As the curtain parts and we enter the first dream, I question: Are the movements done for me with confidence and bursts of energy flowing from the points of collection to the moment of release? Do they flow full circle, reabsorbed, not lost or distracted by the blare of static within or between spirits? And once I am there inside the sueno, where does it take me? Do the pulsing motions expose continuing voices? Is there a mystery to raise my passion, rather than a dance choreographed by a brand name, the task of singularity? After the first number “Scream” choreographed and performed by Dora Teraoka — I would say so.

The lights dim, the energy dwindles to not much more than the bond of 200 bare feet and then we are in Dream #2: “Inside the Walls” choreographed by Rebecca Good, where I realize if a movement starts on one foot and drops to the ground, groveling forward to the point where it is prostrate, propped up on arms and a weak voice emerges, it is bound to do it again to music – music that inspired expression and graceful flow. Only then do I feel the draw, the gentle tug that slides me forward on the bar that I am perched on and makes me grin. 

In the evening, when before the ghostly forms in slumber party attire create through sloppy mockery of controlled movement, an atmosphere that transcends from the pacifying voice of a Latin Dream, with words like Estrella and Arena, the challenge begins to decipher the intent of “Sincera ” choreographed by Natalia Valerdi. If it’s not a parody, when does it end?

And then the lights come back on and l am back in the “Blue Room,” choreographed by Sara Kuhn. Are all these other people in there too? Where is the lady with a baby who only cries at times when static silence, not darkness, pervades the atmosphere in the audience? Had everyone else’s heart stopped beating in the presence of eyes appearing behind swirls of permanence diluted in the drifting bubbles? Did they feel teased by tangent grooves that only flowed to the chorus of “Spill the Wine,” or was the pleasure only mine? 

It is amazing, the bombardment of senses to the unprepared mind, an improv of reactions that escape the learned observer’s eye, but it seems that the silence in “A Duet for a Woman and a Piano” choreographed by Julie Kane, slaps a wave of suspense across the sea of bare feet, the slow turning motion of a piano pushed ahead by a static crawl, draped in a satin robe of an impossible color, a creature that moves with such presence, such weight that the walls hum to the reverberated friction of toes drug over the ground. But we pity the creature, so powerful and densely stuffed with matter that wants, that needs, that cries to be converted through music to flowing kinematic energy, unbounded. And then we cry as the creature collapses, anguished and throws up to the piano a last strike chord and we realize that with it, the movement dies, unseen.

As blackness lapses us from sueno to sleep and back again, the energy is high, a potential hovering overhead, waiting to spring alive as it did in “The Formative Years” choreographed by Rachel McClallan. I feel a chill roll down my body and stare in frigid anticipation of soulful recognition. This piece has heat and blasts me right off of my chair. I am swept up in the current which leaves me naked, defenseless and under attack on the battlefield called love. Between the ranks of tempting Weibs, my gaze drifts from the one with long controlled strides and sulking eyes to the grace of inspired movement, guided through a body, flexible for the passage or pass-off of rhythmic pulses in perfect time. It is an ecstasy that wants to make me “Scream.” 

Dreams that take me places that I have never been are even better if they take me to realities that don’t even exist, like the one created in “Strange Bed Fellows” choreographed by the Arm?? Here we dive inside subtle expressions between states of consciousness, like the first moments in the morning when masks are revealed and a smirk betrays what the mind would hide. The effect of such motion not guided by direction but a threshing trance is more powerful than dance. 

Now the curtain is red with the blood of the Public’s Enemy for “Three Minutes,” choreographed by Monica Campbell. Movements are tossed from confused invasion and work me through cohesive actions of committed folk willing to fight and form unity, but not into marching in lines. 

I feel with them the impulse to feign obedience to gain time for their energy to rise, but then my rising emotion is checked as cold reality denies the desired fate, and I cry as I see something really beautiful suddenly die.

And I wake up dead to the somber tones of a poem by the Chilean tormente (Pablo Neruda) in “Oil and Water on Canvas,” choreographed by Valerie Walker Holm. But even mystified behind the cloak of a strange tongue, the story is one that’s been played before, at least we think it has. A quick flare of passion glimmers with evolution that never happens, as the translation makes clear.

In “protect me from what you want,” choreographer Dawn Levingston steals my attention completely. She offers a simmering expressive connectivity to coax me to breathe after living under a rock, and the performer Cathy Wright does this with incredible ease. 

Finally, when a moral rigid code is allowed to spin in the wind as eddies in a vast ocean of air, a mock ballet, “Put Asunder,” choreographed by Don Decker, turns into a passionate coupling interrupted by evil stares, stares that break through unconvincing lust to reveal eddies spiraling unguided as the comedy covers up the dancing because it must. 

Leaving this performance, I feel brilliantly refreshed, my interest in the art rekindled by the warmth radiating off of a mountain I used to love. Kinesphere contained atmospheric dance that carried me beyond moods into dreams I would never have had. Let the evolution continue. —Scott Lazar

Read more from the SLUG archives:
Vallejo
No Doubt: The End of Solidarity is Irony

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