Last weekend marked the 22nd time that RAWdance’s Wendy Rein and Ryan Smith have served up excerpts from the work of Bay Area choreographers in a tapas-style program branded as the CONCEPT series.
Wendy Rein and Ryan T. Smith of RAWdance (Photo: Margo Moritz)
The hosts’ conviviality, and the free-flowing popcorn, cookies and jellybeans, conferred a refreshing insouciance on the majestic Green Room at the War Memorial Opera House. Some of the works are still taking shape, and with a strip of open floor space designated as the stage, the experience felt less engineered than the typical performance but distinctly more formal than an open rehearsal.
In this instalment, I counted five Boys in Trouble, five women beset by anxiety, six angels (two flying solo and a posse of four), and a dithering couple on some kind of road trip.
Arletta Anderson and Adam Smith’s work-in-progress was the one baffling encounter of the evening. The pair marched purposefully around the space, periodically testing their ability to balance on one leg, while breathlessly recounting their childhood experiences with arts and crafts. Their ramblings kept circling back to the subject of what sounded like either “an elephant’s trunk on a long trip” or “an elephant’s Trump on a long trip” – unclear, but perhaps hinting at an allegory of Grand Old Party capers. The work-in-progress was titled Our Attempt To (I); perhaps Our Attempt to (II) will reveal all.
Sean Dorsey gave us a tantalizing teaser for his evening-length work BOYS IN TROUBLE, which premieres later this month at Z Space. Dorsey with Brian Fisher, ArVéjon Jones, Nol Simonse and Will Woodward first swooped across the stage as tightly as a flock of birds, then proposed themselves alternately as a pack of teenage girls and a pack of teenage boys. The results were both hilarious and poignant.
Alyssandra Katherine Dance Project (Photo: Al Ponce)
Alyssandra Katherine Wu made anxiety disorder manifest in a piece called Unravel, set to a soundtrack that featured voice recordings of women describing the physical and mental ravages of the illness. Kelsey Gerber (in a particularly striking performance), Rose Huey, Tayler Kinner, Nina Wu and Stacey Yuen dove into the maelstrom – at some points tied up with string, at others trapped in a web of string. Yet all that string seemed superfluous, as the women made their points powerfully through their movement. The choreography provided bracing counterpoint to the coping strategies articulated in the voice recordings, which included “organizing makes me calm” and “focusing on symmetry in composition makes me calm.”
The calm at the vortex of a storm was where Sydney Franz, in her work-in-progress solo, Untitled, seemed to want to take us. Her twisty, airy movement reflected an intense curiosity as she explored imaginary nooks and crannies, finding joy in many of her discoveries. Her seraphic expression was that of a guardian angel – in diverting contrast to her workaday attire and the white-noise soundtrack. Though austere in presentation, the work felt warmly lit by the grand chandeliers overhead, a few simple uplights, and the glowing green EXIT signs.
Sydney Franz (Photo: Stephen Texeira)
Smoky-eyed Gabriel Mata gave us a more fervid image of an angel in Diane Frank’s Tendril No. 6, set to a haunting, buzzing soundtrack by Dohee Lee. Sinewy and aerodynamic, clad in diaphanous raiment dyed in shades of emerald and gold which matched the walls and trim of the Green Room, Mata traced a path through the celestial sphere that seemed fraught with peril.
It was a busy day in heaven for the quartet of angels from RAWdance. In a work titled Accused, choreographers Rein and Smith, with Kinner and Katerina Wong, flew around in filmy tunics, making enveloping gestures that invariably culminated in a finger pointed to their own chest. That frequently repeated gesture, performed with an ecstatic serenity, seemed less like a self-accusation and more like the gracious acceptance of responsibility for guiding a soul on its final journey. All four gave gripping performances but Rein and Smith in particular seemed to be lit from within.
