|
by Ellen
Baxt
Spoke the Hub's 3rd
installment of their Gowanus Wildlife Preserve
Showcase was bookended by the delicious,
crooning, twangy sounds of Slackjaw,
plucked by Rob Meador, Doug Pierson and Ian Stell.
Their pieces, written especially for the occasion, paid tender, ridiculous
homage to everyone's favorite Brooklyn
waterway, the Gowanus. Their performance included
poetic interludes between each song, narrating the history of the stinky
canal. An A+ for costuming, they donned T-shirts emblazoned with the words,
Viva Gowanus! with what
appeared to be a neon crab floating in the background. Their grand finale
was Brooklyn Ball, when they opened the floor to audience members of all
ages, who happily kicked up their heels and do-si-doed
their neighbors. Although they sometimes forgot the words, their happy,
nostalgic, Brooklyn-pride-filled performance seemed to capture the hearts
of the entire audience, and bolstered the supportive, feel-good environment
Spoke the Hub has become known for.
Lily Skove
returned for a second season on the Gowanus and
her "Hinged" did not disappoint. Punctuated by sharp, athletic
movements, dancers Corey Harrower, Bridget Palardy
and Lana Wilson seemed to be blown across the stage by a hurricane,
crashing into each other as birds sweetly tweeted in the background. The
music began to ramp up, matching the dancers' artful collisions. I kept
thinking about hope, as they crash-banged into each other, then settled into comfortable closeness, a momentary
touch, caress before the next hurricane came sweeping through. The bodies, erect and angular, seemed to
soften and yield openings where another body could settle. At times, the
push-pull, I-love-you-don't-touch-me, crash-caress cycle seemed a bit
repetitive, though still somehow captivating. The piece left me with a
satisfying optimism that the large and small violences
of life can be soothed, if not repaired, by an intimacy that follows them.
In a hilarious and disturbing change of
pace, Danielle Abrams opened her theatrical offering by discussing her new
career path, as a Stoop Sale Assistant, passing out flyers detailing her
services. No one was sure whether this was fact or fiction but that didn't
seem to matter as she progressed down her bullet-pointed list. Her next
monologue was an exposé of neighborhood car services, Eastern and Arecibo,
commenting on the racial and cultural assumptions, insults and general
nastiness car service travel seems to engender, and perhaps encourage? profanities flying in true Brooklyn
fashion. On a trajectory from silly to serious, another monologue took
place in a supermarket, where a conflict between a junkie and a supermarket
employee turned physical, sending the junkie flying through the locked
glass case. It was a disturbing and powerful moment, as Abrams described
the woman crashing into glass, droplets of sweat and blood mixing with
… droplets of Enfamil, leaving the audience to wondering why,
particularly in neighborhoods where people of color predominate, baby
formula is kept under lock and key. When a 7-year old in the front row
became afflicted with an absolutely uncontrollable case of the giggles, she
had trouble keeping in character but rather than detracting from her
performance, this responsiveness to the audience seemed to enrich it.
Krista Miller's "Liturgy" was
a tough piece for me to love, but won me over in the end. At the start, I
was put off by the appearance of two white dancers, Krista Miller and
Miranda Jirik, squatting and shaking to
tribal-sounding music. They seemed to be emulating the stereotypical noble,
spiritual native. However, as the piece progressed, it revealed a complex
critique of institutionalized religion, one dancer obediently following the
other as a rigid, expressionless zombie. Later, a bowl of water on stage
was used for a baptism, droplets of water putting its unknowing victim in a
trance. This piece was more than it appeared to be at first, and
"Flight from/to…" showed
Frances Becker performing a slow, winding dance in a wedding dress, in the
snow, in the woods. The sinewy movements unfolded meditatively as she
spread herself over snow, and in and around bare branches. Over the course
of the piece, the dress, unzipped, began to fall off her shoulders, baring
her breasts to the snow-bright sun. Like "Liturgy's" critique of
religion, "Flight from/to…" seemed to resist the natural
goodness of marriage. The dress, unnecessary, shedded,
seemed to symbolize the dancer's rejection of the institution of marriage.
Although the slowness and repetition created a meditative mood, the piece
was too much of the same thing for too long. I don’t think it was
able to capture the attention of its audience for the length of the piece.
It was an interesting concept and strong statement in need of some editing.
|
|
