[d]elusive minds
by
Douglas Messerli
BODYTRAFFIC, directed by Lillian Rose Barbeito
and Tina Finkleman Berkett / performance at The Wallis Bram Goldsmith Theater,
September 26, 2019 / I attended this performance with Diana Bing Daves
McLaughlin.
In
my 2018 review of the Los Angeles dance company BODYTRAFFIC, this year and next
the company-in-residence at The Wallis Bram Goldsmith Theater, I promised,
without recalling it, that I would be attending their next performance. Yet so
I did. And what a remarkable experience that was last night.
Their final number, “A Million Voices,” based, in fact, on the
voice of a single American singer, Peggy Lee, I reviewed in my 2018 essay (see My
Year 2018 and my site at USTheater, Opera, and Performance, https://ustheater.blogspot.com/2018/06/douglas-messerli-lets-keep-dancing-on.html)
so I will not talk about it here—although it clearly retained its charm and
warmed the hearts of the theater’s nearly standing-room audience.
What stood out in this production of 4
dances, 3 of which were west coast, US, or world premieres, was that this
wonderful company headed by Lillian Rose Barbeito and Tina Finkelman Berkett—Berkett
also the lead dancer of the company—is the growing maturity of their work,
their ability to take on quite seriously narrative work, and their
extraordinary abilities as dancers. This company, particularly in the first
work of the evening, [d]elusive minds, which is based on the true story
of a mental patient suffering from a kind of schizophrenia “where the person
becomes convinced that a family member has been replaced by an imposter” (think
of Don Siegel’s film The Invasion of the Body Snatchers, wherein nearly
everyone has the mental illness described as Capgras Delusion). In this case
Santiago kills the wife he deeply loves and continues to write to her from
prison for 15 years, believing in his “illusion” that she was still living.
Choreographed with a marvelously
beautiful set by Fernando Hernando Magadan and almost delirious lighting by Peter
Lemmens, dancers Berkett and Guzmán Rosado play out the signature movements of
this company, almost body-defying shifts of body over body, with hand movements
that convey so much of the intensity of the narrative. These dancers move over,
around, above, and through one another in a way that seems to almost defy
gravity. This dance is so beautifully intense that when the murder actually
occurs we almost perceive it as blended into their love. They are not only a
couple, performing an intricate pas de deux, in this performance they
dance as a constantly shifting “one,” until you can almost comprehend why the
mentally-disturbed male might think that the “other” is no longer the woman he
loved. She has become him, and the dance conveys their impossibility to
separate identities through nearly incomprehensible overlays of legs, arms, and
other body parts. No matter how you might want to distance dance from
sexuality, in this company’s performances the dancers make it clear, without
the sexual winking of someone like the choreographer Matthew Bourne, there is
no way to separate the pairs or, in the case of the delightful visit to the
beach in Snap, the second of the company’s works, an entire community, from
representing an intense sexual interchange. In BODYTRAFFIC, the bodies and
their constant mutability is everything.
Snap is a kind of lark, a visit to the
beach but also just a dip into the waters of everyday life by the entire cast
of Berkett, Joseph Davis, Haley Heckethorn, Myles Lavallee, Rosando, and Jarma
White—some in beach-wear, others in festive costumes, umbrellas allowed,
accompanied by the somewhat harsh sounds of Schocke, counterbalanced by the
sometimes silly terpsichorean movements by choreographer Micaela Taylor that
obviously just represent fun. But again this company’s “just fun” involves
serious gymnastic interchanges between company members. The complexity of this
was truly amazing, which my theater-going friend, Diana Daves, commented on:
“How can they possibly remember all those different movements?” Well, that is
one of the wonders of this company. I would be hard-pressed to imagine how any
other company might recreate this dance. Let us hope they have recorded it in
chorographical language.
After an intermission, performers Davis
and Rosando danced Resolve, who in Wewolf’s choreography, come together,
push away, come back, and crawl gradually over and above one another in a
relationship that at moments seems about to dissolve before transforming this
couple into a kind acknowledged unity that cannot be denied. Isn’t this the
story of any intense relationship? Surely is has been mine.
Of course, A Million Voices, with
Peggy Lee’s standards brought everyone to a standing ovation. But, in fact, I
realized even by the intermission that this Los Angeles audience was far more
sophisticated about dance and that just as in its orchestral and art worlds,
this city is now truly quite involved in dance theater. A city with such
significant film, food, dance, music, and art—who could ask for anything more,
even if I am primarily a literature person? I can only commend The Wallis, the
Broad Theater, and now Redcat for their embracement of dancing.
Los
Angeles, September 27, 2019
Reprinted
from USTheater, Opera, and Performance (September 2019)
brilliant and true!
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