Review: LIFE IN MOTION: A STORY TOLD THROUGH DANCE at Shadowbox Live!

The word “fearless” is spray-painted on the walls leading into the Shadowbox Live! Theatre (503 S. Front Street in downtown Columbus). Dancer Emily O’Regan received and delivered that message loud and clear to a sold-out audience on April 29.

For a metaperformer used to doing aerial acrobatics while being suspended from hoops, O’Regan is used to taking chances. She took a similar approach to her LIFE IN MOTION: A STORY TOLD THROUGH DANCE performance.

O’Regan took a no-holds-barred look at her life, discussing everything from her career as a stripper, her struggles with hard drugs, and jerk boyfriends. The show left the performer and the audience gasping for air by the end.

“I’m very raw and very open,” she said afterward. “I tried to be real. I wanted it all out there.

“I like telling my story because I hope it inspires people. I hope it resonated with people, so they don’t feel alone in certain sorts of situations.”

At the heart of it all, in the good times as well as the bad ones, has been her desire to dance.

“My mom says I was always dancing,” O’Regan said. “At every wedding, I was the first and sometimes the only kid out there dancing with the adults. I’d jump and spin until I wore myself out. Then I had to be carried home.”

O’Regan recently uncovered the spirit of that tiny dancer when she returned home for a visit. She found a poem she wrote in third grade about how dancing made her feel.

That poem led her to design, write, and choreograph LIFE IN MOTION. Even at the beginning stages of the project, she gave herself a strict deadline.

“Before I even did anything, I told people about it and it was going to be on April 29,” she said afterward. “Then I realized now I have to do it.”

Between her monologues, O’Regan and dancers Landon Manuel, Alexis Slaughter, Riley Mak, Sebastian L. Fenton, Nyla Nyamweya, Keahlie Cruz, Tori Semler, and Lohith Suresh performed routines to illustrate her story or color in the emotions.

She assembled an eclectic playlist that ranged from Florence and the Machine, Prince, and Demi Lovato to lesser-known groups like The Be Good Tanyas and The Oh Hellos. That was a savvy move; it kept the audience focused on the action and not humming along with the song selection.

The energy those nine dancers put out often couldn’t be confined to the stage. Occasionally, routines would spill out onto the floor as the group mingled with the patrons.

At the end of each routine, O’Regan took a long drink, caught her breath, and then started another story.

The one-act performance showed O’Regan is not only a talented dancer but has an effective turn of phrase as a writer as well. I didn’t relate to every story, but I was drawn into each one.

Her playbill came with a warning label, with a laundry list of the topics that were going to be discussed.

It was well-heeded.

Throughout the show, a seven-year-old boy was a yard from the stage. He was mesmerized by the action. However, as soon as O’Regan began talking about her life as a burlesque dancer, the parents escorted their child out of the performance space. They later brought him back in for the rest of the show.

“I told them that was coming,” she said.

She then talked to the audience unapologetically about what led her to explore the stripping scene.

“I was a broke college girl with a love for dance, a pretty face, a fantastic rack, and a need for attention. All the ingredients to be a stripper,” she said with a laugh.

“Much of the best advice I’ve ever gotten was from strippers. Don’t (mess) with someone else’s money. Never give a man more than what he paid for. And don’t let anyone disrespect you for your hustle.”

O’Regan also talked at length about her struggles with her ex-boyfriend and her descent into drugs. At her lowest point, she would go to a 24-hour dance studio “sometimes to dance, sometimes to sit and sob.”

“I never felt a warmer embrace than the air of that empty room and that cold hardwood floor,” O’Regan said with a sigh. “But laying on that floor was never going to solve anything. So, I got up and kept moving forward in search of my new life.”

O’Regan credits her return to dance and her friends at Shadowbox Live! for helping her overcome her depression and dependency.

“I was surrounded by fantastic people and yet I never felt more alone,” she told the hushed crowd. “I owe everything to dance. It is the reason why I’m still here.

“My heart has been broken so many times and sewed back together so it is a beautiful mosaic. You (the Shadowbox Live! metaperformers) have added a stitch to my tapestry.”

As the group closed out the number with the bass-pumping “Sympathy Magic” by Florence and the Machine, that same blonde kid, whose parents took him out of the show momentarily, was back in his seat, swaying and pumping his fists in appreciation.

O’Regan must have seen something of herself in her young fan.

“Even 20 years later, I’m still that little girl who finds joy and excitement in every jump, step, and movement,” she said. “I’m still that same kid who wears herself out and has to be carried home.”

Who knows? Maybe twenty years from now, the blonde-haired child might be doing his own version of this show and thanking O’Regan. Keep April 29, 2046, open just in case.

Photo credit: Crimson Photography