On the Boards, February 16 - 18
Over the last two seasons, On the Boards has experienced something of a renaissance, presenting significant and engaging contemporary dance and performance from around the world. Gone are the days when subscribers would have to face the likes of Karen Findlay, Bill T. Jones, and Spaulding Gray year after year. But if achieving this status were not enough, the organization has also maintained its decades-long commitment to showcasing work by local artists. The outcomes of these efforts, however, have often been mixed. Programs like Northwest New Works Festival and 12 Minutes Max have given On the Boards a strong connection to the local dance and theater communities, but have resulted in some forgettable evenings.
Given these odds, last weekend’s Split Bill – Portland’s Monster Squad and Seattle’s Zoe Scofield -- was a surprising success. Could it be the trickle-down effect of those national and global acts On the Boards has brought to town these last two years? Probably not. The Northwest has always been capable of generating contemporary art in its own ways, even during older, more isolated times.
Monster Squad choreographer Tahni Holt collaborated with visual artist Marty Schnapf to create the dizzying and dyspeptic Island Desk: my teeny tiny knowledge of nothing. It is a dramatization of the cumulative psychic effect ‘the office’ can have upon the individual and the collective group; the struggle of a diminished spirit acting upon desires in a place where they must always be kept in check.
The dancers appear between, or at times behind, a series of high walls that are repositioned throughout the performance. At the center of the stage are a water cooler and a curious internally illuminated prism. The movement begins with swinging arms and languorous swoops and falls that culminate in desperate catches or embraces. These in turn give way to an exhausted crawling or dragging. Suddenly, the serenity of the solo piano is replaced by the jazzy rhythm of a strumming acoustic guitar and the warm, ambient hum of a distant singer. As we hear the percussive sounds of a typewriter, the dancers momentarily gain their stride and coworkers coalesce into synchronized spasms. Jerking violently in unison, they shake their heads and outstretched arms.
Throughout the piece, the folly of these sequences -- with their alignments and fragmentation -- are repeated again and again. The dancers’ bodies are overcome by fatigue before falling back in line. At times the pace of the dream-like mayhem slows to a halt and the stage darkens. The surreal vision of a bird taking flight becomes visible on one of the walls: it is a stark contrast to the realities of this physical space, but a representation, no doubt, of some unrealized internal grace. Soon the dancers tremble around the water cooler, frantically clasping paper cups as if trying to replenish a spent life force.
In the end, the rectangular form of a desk is visible on the surface of the moveable walls, which have been turned on their side. Surrounded by a projection of flowing water, it is rendered a lonely island, but we see the reflected waves float above it.
However poetic, Island Desk reminds us of our buried hopes and lost expectations. In spite of this, there is a degree of humor that arises from our understanding that we are complicit in our own social degradation. As we watch the dancers we recognize a familiar physical anguish and find ourselves less horrified than amused.
Like Island Desk, Zoe Scofield’s there ain’t no easy way out was the result of her collaboration with a visual artist, Juniper Shuey, and a composer, Morgan Henderson. At first we see a hologram-like projection of a woman on a swing and hear the low, solitary tones of a bass clarinet. But soon the dancers emerge on stage, enveloped in a deep fog, and we begin to witness a much different piece unfold.
While contemporary dance tends to be heavily idea-based, Scofield is concerned more with qualities than concepts. At a time and in a venue were technique is often a well-meaning dance company’s Achilles’ heel, this is a most welcome sight. I doubt if there has been a performance at On the Boards in recent years, local or otherwise, with better dancers or a more refined vocabulary of movement.
The work is both lyrical and thought provoking, but suffers ultimately from an unclear intentions and lack of compositional unity. There ain’t no easy way out of what? This place does not look so bad, really, with its elegant costumes and elaborate, if ambiguous, stagecraft. Had Scofield’s movement been moored to an overriding thought or sentiment, as Holt’s had been, we might have experienced something considerably more powerful. But seeing dance this well executed is pleasure enough.
