Review: AN ASIAN AMERICAN DANCE JOURNEY at Woolly Mammoth Theatre

The Dana Tai Soon Burgess Dance Company produced two programs for back-to-back weekends of An Asian American Dance Journey at Woolly Mammoth Theatre, April 24th through May 3rd. “Program A” consisted of longstanding repertoire classics and included the premiere of an inspired and inspirational piece, “Drawing in Space,” that will assuredly join the same ranks. Each piece had strong, emotive color stories and heartfelt narratives of humanity beautifully executed by the prolific dance company.

“Drawing in Space” embodied art in conversation with itself and was a true, beautiful study of another artist’s craft. The piece was a tribute to the Japanese-American artist Ruth Asawa, whose fluid, looping metal wire sculptures were the muse. The set and the dancers were awash with canvas-white cloaks, letting projections of Asawa’s forms play in the space with them. Tomas Fischer and Baylee Wong moved around each other in a synchronized, dutiful relationship. Their costumes were tailor-made, fitted up top and flared at the bottom, their figures mirroring the art’s organic curves. They bent and encircled each other’s bodies in smooth yet defined edges, twirling as if drawing figures with their feet. They were also lit so their shadows were visible, creating another layer of the space they were playing in.

Pulling back to the existing repertoire, “Meditations” bathed the stage in a calming, regal purple. Identically dressed pairs of dancers moved in and out of the spotlight waves, creating an expression of the collective journey of the Asian American community. As if the same pair was traversing different times and paths but coming from the same place, the dancers were sweeping and dipping and intertwining in silky-smooth duets. While there was less of a narrative showing, the piece was moving for its depictions of a tight-knit community expressing its strong harmony. 

“Caverns” upped the urgency and emotional complexity of the program in earthy, gritty browns and blacks to detail the pits and cycles of escaping a toxic love. Three dancers—Natasha Ames, Joan Ayap, and Felipe Oyarzun Moltedo—were entangled in a tumultuous battle. Moltedo’s role was a sinister one, often evading or interrupting the gentle coaxing of “the protagonist” (Ayap) while grabbing and chasing his shrinking, distressed prey of her past self (Ames). The lights were shuttered, with only an overhead spotlight revealing the harsh lines of the dancers. In the end, the damaged pair was left in the deep dark of the past, and the protagonist made it out with bittersweet triumph. 

“Charlie Chan and The Mystery of Love” was a comedic, imaginative, romantic, and devastating Technicolor drama. Moltedo again took to the scene in the titular rendition of Chan, who relied on iconography of classic media for a journey of self-discovery. Including flapper girls, the Virgin Mary, and a couple straight out of the Titanic movie, tropes of love and identity were explored and flipped. The dance and creative direction were a lot more on-the-nose than the allegorical concentration of most of the program: the pantomime stylings, theatrical props, and notable love songs came together as a direct, vivid love letter to the past. In a post-show Q&A with the company founder and Associate Director Moltedo, Soon Burgess revealed that the piece was largely autobiographical about his upbringing. The piece was a moving recontextualizing of religion and sexuality and a reclaiming of lead roles for Asian and queer men, where Soon Burgess felt they were underrepresented.

DTSBDC’s An Asian American Dance Journey was a program with compact yet explosive stage presence. The Woolly Mammoth Theatre made a welcoming home for the company’s first consistent two-week residency in one theatre in its 33 years. May 1st through 3rd will trade out select pieces for others, yet for “Drawing in Space” alone, the second weekend will be well worth a watch. 

Runtime: 2 hours, including one intermission and post-show Q&A