BWW Reviews: WAVE RISING - Cycling the Tide

No ghouls or ghosts in Program C at John Ryan Theater in the annual Wave Rising Series, although the three piece program had its share of tricks, treats, and characters. Deviated Theatre's The Short Forever presented aerialists in its dance opera; The People Movers Not So Shiny bicycle jaunt dwelt on the meaning of success; and White Wave Young Soon Kim Dance Company's Eternal NOW excerpts put the dancers through a virtuosic obstacle course.

Director Enoch Chan and choreographer Kimmie Dobb Chan created an otherworld inhabited by air borne glittery quadrupeds, robotic bipeds, and a mysterious little boy. The quadripeds skittered around the stage, their movements sharp and sudden. As they encountered each other, they clicked their tongues in communication. Several crates sat upstage and an aerial hoop hung center stage. Their approach to the hoop found uniqueness in that they used it to frame themselves and their movement rather than as an impetus for choreographic display. As they crept around each other, they exhibited a timid curiosity. A little boy appeared from underneath one of the boxes and received cautionary welcome into their abode. Danger loomed: quadrupeds scattered frantically upon the arrival of black and silver biped robot creatures. A sound track, "This is the story of what when wrong...testing, 1,2,3," enveloped the depiction of science gone wrong. The breadth of the score added to the chaotic scene (nature sounds conflicted with the industrial set and design.) Together, the quadrupeds and bipeds might have made complete beings but instead consisted only of incomplete, extreme capacities. Because of their incompleteness as beings, their territorial fight exhausted both parties' resources. In the end, only a quadruped and the boy remained.

Not So Shiny opened with a video, giving the audience the virtual reality of biking. The three dancers started off on their bikes, releasing red and silver balloons to the ceiling. A series of ruminations on success accompanied their wheeled escapade, which they used for comedic effect. Each dancer built a different relationship to their bike: Dave Glista partnered the bike as one might another dancer, Bre Short allowed her bike to be her partner, and choreographer Kate Ladenheim moved in tandem with her bike. In solos, duets, and trios, Ladenheim steered the work with the vocabulary of wheels - coasting, braking, and balancing. In their final responses to the ideas of success - at one time deemed as equally "deserved as failure" in the score - each dancer inflated a balloon. Short deflated hers, Glista let his blow itself away, and Ladenheim chased hers away. Success is different for everyone; to each his own. Just be nice in the bike lane and we can all get along.

Young Soon Kim shared excerpts of Eternal NOW; her nine dancers filled the space in an array of brown, green, gray, purple, and black ensembles. The initial series of phrases were swift and acrobatic; windmilling arms and legs, dancers circling each other, bodies toppling over the other. The dancers' movement capacity superseded the movement vocabulary. The last movements, in which the dancers added four benches to the stage, offered cohesion and most captivated the attention. Along the bench a canon of movement exploded. Contained to the benches, the broad spectrum of Kim's movement gained definition and momentum. The benches enclosed in a square. One dancer inside the square, the others sat facing outward, and whipped through the newspapers. Gradually dancers tossed pages into the square, the rustling and crunching of the sheets added to the cacophony. Once the dancers were down to one page each, they stood in a row, pages held high to the audience. With advertisements for Bergdorf's and editorials on Vladimir Putin fully visible they slowly lowered the pages. The stage became a sea of paper, ideas, and the remains of exertion. A story built and destroyed it in a moment.