Review: DANCING ON THE SABBATH at Shaking The Tree

Samantha Van Der Merwe once again demolishes any idea of conventional theatre with DANCING ON THE SABBATH, her adaptation of "The Twelve Dancing Princesses," now running at Shaking the Tree Theatre. It's a story told without audible dialogue, a movement piece without traditional dance, and an immersive multimedia art installation all rolled into one.

The original Brothers Grimm tale centers on a king whose twelve daughters escape their locked bedroom each night, returning at dawn exhausted and with ruined shoes. The king offers a deadly bargain: discover their secret and marry one to inherit the throne, or fail and face execution. In Van Der Merwe's reimagining, five daughters (played by Sammy Rat Rios, Joellen Sweeney, Olivia Mathews, Kailey Rhodes, and Kayla Hanson) have been deemed unmarriageable, presumably because they have minds of their own. The king sends them to the Center of Compliance, where a heavily armed guard (Kai Hynes) keeps watch, and The Praying Woman (Laura Cannon, who is also the choreographer) leads them through nightly compliance rituals designed to make them "proper" wives. But somehow, they still find ways into mischief.

I can’t tell you very much without giving it all away, but you need to know that you have a job. This production tasks its audience with discovering the princesses' secret, and the princesses cannot know you're watching. You'll don an imaginary invisibility cloak and observe as they prepare for bed and perform their compliance ritual, watching for signs of rebellion. This requires genuine effort and vigilance. Nothing at Shaking the Tree invites passive viewing, and this show demands perhaps the most active participation yet.

As with all of Van Der Merwe's excavations of fairy tales and folklore, the story itself matters less than the universal human experiences beneath it: the impulse to control versus the need to break free, the definition of a "proper" woman (silent, compliant, contained), the irrepressible desire to laugh and play and dance. Without written dialogue (there are conversations, but they take place in hushed tones – you aren’t intended to hear), these themes emerge through movement, breath, expression, singing, and sometimes screaming. Similar to the action, Van Der Merwe's multi-layered set design reveals itself gradually, and the discovery of how this world functions is part of the experience. 

The cast is incredible. This is up-close-and-personal theatre to the extreme, and the performers are so skillful at ignoring the audience that the invisibility cloak stops feeling like a theatrical conceit – you genuinely start to wonder if they can see you. 

This is genre-defying, uncompromising, and completely original. Van Der Merwe has created something that will challenge, provoke, and transform your understanding of what a night at the theatre can be. The show asks you to feel rather than analyze in the moment, though it leaves plenty to examine afterward. I guarantee it will be unlike anything else you'll see this year, or perhaps ever again.

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