What do you get when you mix four
adventurous choreographers, one of whom is also a new media artist, with a raft
of contemporary and historic influences, from Hieronymus Bosch to Louise
Bourgeois to traditional magic acts, all addressing the challenges of
self-expression and identity in our fast-paced world? On Saturday night at the
Institute of Contemporary Art, what we got was “The Disappearing Woman,’’ an
ambitious world premiere collaboration sponsored by Summer Stages Dance and the
Baryshnikov Arts Center between New England choreographers Nell Breyer, Alissa
Cardone, Lorraine Chapman, and Bronwen MacArthur.
A tight 50-minutes long, “The
Disappearing Woman’’ is a rich, sprawling mélange of ideas and images, a little
messy and puzzling in spots, but totally engaging and visually striking. The
central theme emerges in two voiceovers. The first, a monologue of serio-comic
philosophical musings, addresses our “age of anxiety’’ and the issues of having
children and understanding identity while under constant assault by the media.
The second, a recorded phone message
from Chapman to Breyer near the work’s inception, brings it home on a more
personal level. It’s a poignant, funny, rambling message tinged with panic
about how she wasn’t going to have movement ready in time for rehearsal because
she was obsessing about a grant letter and an impending family vacation and
feeling swamped and overwhelmed and maybe she could find time on the cruise to
work, but. . . You get the idea. And onstage, Chapman lays sprawled on her
back, her head tucked inside a box, while the quicksilver Cardone and
loose-limbed MacArthur create their own frenetic worlds. Jagged, slicing,
tumbling, curling phrases in hyperdrive are captured in individual pools of
light (beautifully designed by Tim Cryan).
Chapman also alludes to the challenges
of a balanced life in two vivid solos that beautifully utilize the ICA space. One, set
outside the theater’s back window, with boats passing in the distance, features
precarious balances pressed against the glass. In another, a marvel of
resolution and confusion, she seems to fall apart and pull herself back
together again and again, restrained by a corridor of light set behind a series
of bars.
Breyer’s sophisticated, eye-popping
video comes and goes on a variety of screens - the back wall, set designer
Caleb Wertenbaker’s translucent white screen cubicle, small boxes that suggest
both safety and confinement - and it mirrors, masks, and complements the
women’s movement. Sometimes, as in MacArthur’s dazzling solo with her own
shadow and prerecorded images, the dancer disappears into the video, her
luxurious lunges, stretches and reaches sending her in and out of darkness.
The work’s poignant ending alludes to
one possible answer for some of the central issues - community. As Breyer pulls
a floor to ceiling scrim across the stage, the other three dancers finally come
together, arms linked. Their movements fluidly suggest the camaraderie and
support their individual moments lacked - an arm around a waist, a head resting
on a shoulder. And Breyer’s ghostly video images stunningly capture their synergistic
energy. Unlike the black and white videos of earlier, these final images
pulsate with vivid, saturated color.
© Copyright 2009 Globe Newspaper Company.
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