Just a quick one this week, with a site-adaptive dance piece in NYC and a 360 montage film in the Bay Area. Let’s go…
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Carnal Spill — Carrie Ahern Dance
$25; New York, NY; Through May 21
Through her Sex Status dance series, Carrie Ahern has sought to explore the relationship between women, their partners and their sex lives. Told through dance and spoken word, Carnal Spill is a continuation of this series, with new bodies expressing these new, yet familiar, stories with the audience.
Taking place in a private residence in Midtown Manhattan (later performances take place in a different residence in Brooklyn), the six superb performers share their own experiences through a series of engaging vignettes. Language is a central theme to the evening, with an exploration of the words we use to describe ourselves or our partners being carefully analyzed through the lens of a lover. Dance takes the place of explanation, and interpretation allows much more to be said than could possibly be enunciated. The mercurial bodies of these movement artists can in a fleeting moment go from torture to ecstasy and back again just as quickly. In another scene reflections through upheld mirrors seem to tell so much more than the words that are uttered towards the reflection, as self loathing might suddenly become an invitation when the right light is shone upon it.
Although adorned with some very effective lighting, the space was interacted with in the same way that a black box might be, with no real acknowledgment of the site and the potential for story of the apartment itself. I found myself waiting for that tantalizing moment of engagement, which unfortunately never came.
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It was still a very effective and engaging event, but by tapping into the given space, I feel like the message of the evening could have been brought even closer to home.
— Edward Mylechreest, New York City Correspondent
Gone, Gone Beyond — People Like Us
$10-$30; San Francisco, CA; Through May 27
The quiet hum of crickets in candlelight turns into opening of The Sound of Music…except helicopter bombers are destroying the hillside as Julie Andrews euphorically sings. Then, the screen reads “it’s time” and I begin falling through a series of doors in a jarring vortex of old films.
This is just the first few minutes of Gone, Gone Beyond, an immersive multimedia collage that takes viewers on a dizzying journey through time. The project promises that it “breaks the rectangle, smashing the thin screen into tiny fragments”. Seated on a carpeted floor surrounded by 10 screens and an 8-channel speaker system, I could indeed turn for a 360° view. With each screen showing unique images and unlimited directions to look, there are innumerable potential viewing experiences.
The experience’s power lies in its ability to turn something you think you know — a recognizable song or movie — into something meaningless and unidentifiable. It makes sense that the work is grounded in the Buddhist Heart Sutra, “form is emptiness.”
The end of the Sutra says “Gone, gone beyond, gone utterly beyond”, and the representation of this idea was clear and compelling. At one point, everything on screen is spinning. There’s a carousel surrounding you, a Whirling Dervish multiplying, a ballet dancer endlessly spinning, and Charlie Chaplain jovially evading capture in a revolving door. It’s disorienting, depressing, and delightful.
Because the show was fully wordless, I didn’t quite understand the deeper social commentary. I don’t think it matters though: the goal of the experience was to go “beyond the frame to where there are no edges to the narrative — just emptiness.” At the end, someone said to me, “she really went there, didn’t she?” I agreed, despite not knowing exactly where “there” was. I think that’s just the point.
— Elissa Mardiney, San Francisco Correspondent
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