Dancers of Printz Dance Project in SOUL+MATES (Photo: Jeff Zender)
Leigh Donlan reported from Z Space:
Is there really such a thing as a soulmate? It’s not an easy subject, but one that Printz Dance Project bravely investigated Wednesday night at Z Space with their premiere of Soul+Mates. The work focused primarily on a couple that appeared to be soulmates (Stacey Printz, the choreographer, and Jorge Vasquez), along with ten other dancers, each seeking their own missing half. Individual vignettes were woven together by a white couch and a fantastic musical score of songs, sounds and beats by composer “Kraddy” (Matthew Kratz).
The show began with the lead couple spotlit, moving together harmoniously, mirroring each other with certainty. As the lights rose, dancers began to roam the stage singly. They appeared disappointed and made frantic gestures of pushing and pulling. As the vignettes progressed, the lead couple began to experience conflict that led to boredom and distrust. Their once consensual relationship turned into a desperate bondage of fear.
Meanwhile, the often hilarious, sometimes frightening, attempts of the others to find their soul mates played out. At one point, the white couch became a club scene of five giddy girls sitting like ladies-in-waiting, scanning the room for men. As the men appeared, the girls performed ridiculously happy dances to impress their suitors. The music changed, and it was the same scene, different song. At another point, a man and woman were paired up on the couch. She walked its perimeters like a tightrope, playfully threatening to jump at any given moment while making sure she looked sexy doing it. She finally took the leap off the couch, and sure enough he caught her; they fell together, laughing triumphantly.
In one of the strongest scenes, the corps came together for a rage-filled dance. The stage was lit red, and industrial music blasted. They looked hungry and pissed off, and moved together with sharp pulses and downward throws, like tilling concrete. Printz’s dancers are voraciously strong and fearless, both in physique and character, and it showed in this segment, with bodies flying about the stage, jumping off and over the couch into free-falls. There were enormous leaps that lingered in the air, then landed precisely as drums banged. A powerful display of technique and emotion.
This was followed by a passionate enactment of a love triangle. A man sat on the couch while two women engaged in a violent, sexualized dance-off to win his affection. While trying to out-sex one other with jutting hips and gyrations, the women beat each other to a pulp. The man reclined smugly and grinned. Finally, one woman out-sexed the other. The loser, Amanda Lacro, abandoned, performed a sadly beautiful solo to Broadway Project’s “No Pain.” She was overcome by the pain of her wounds, but dared not show it.
Dancers of Printz Dance Project in SOUL+MATES (Photo: Jeff Zender)
The last leg of the performance seemed a bit out of sync with the previous segments, due to the emergence of a large industrial rafter. It swung from the top of the stage-left wall like an arm outstretched over the stage, holding three horizontal platform shelves beneath it. The dancers moved about on it for quite a while, with impressive stunts requiring great strength, mimicking the Erotica scene from Fosse’s All That Jazz and Paula Abdul’s “Cold Hearted Snake” video. Though full of potential, these scenes fell flat because of the awkward wrangling of the heavy rafter. It overwhelmed the space and disrupted the flow of the dance, its weight too heavy for the dancers to maneuver.
But all’s well that ends well… or is it? Kraddy’s “Theme Song” accompanied a sunshiny finale. The trials and tribulations of the evening were resolved as the lead couple came to accept one another, despite their imperfections, and the single dancers embraced one another with ease. But just as we were expecting a fairytale ending, the newfound bonds started to fray. The point was well made: relationships cycle. The closing dance still reverberated with pushing and pulling, but there was no fight left. Instead, there was surrender. The evening ended as it started, with recordings of people talking about relationships, but now with more wisdom, saying things like “… love her when you don’t want to,” and “…soulmate is a choice.”
