She took the tablecloth down to the sea and called it fashion! Jun 17, 2012
by Eric P
Expecting Bad News from the Government is the driving force behind a life of listless thrust. The black core that rots any sprout of optimism, the obvious outcome: a world of crap...so live as if your gonna die tomorrow. There's a weird Buddhist overlay here as nihilism and living in the present moment interchange under the smashing drums and nerve gnashing guitar. Richard Lefebvre and Erika Mayfield exchanging taunts and jabs of encouragement, wallowing in the gloom of glamorous punk shit while looking all the dark superstars of the underground. A projected skitter of 'throw-away' documentary follows them in their appetite for destruction. Erika makes Debby Harry look like a xerox copy. She's so pretty in pink as she steels a jacked up sand blasted derby car, tires smoking to high heaven.
Embracing Vanessa DeWolf's Unrehearsed Ensemble of chaos theory is a color palette of light. Day-glow, primary, glowing and projected that give nice weight and assurance to the caterwauling randomness washing up everywhere. Dots and dashes to the splashy mess, a framework around what's roiling and bumping around. The composition of flotsam therein, each member maintaining a running struggle of emotion, projecting, scattering playful detail like radioactive confetti; the effect of collage and the process of choosing your focus while coaxed to find context. The periphery is just as important as any bulls-eye. Humor comes from too much frosting on the sugar sweet cake, of being sat upon and tickled until you piss yourself. Uncomfortable and delightful.
Cacophony for 8 Players erupts with a klaxon of shredding horn. Is a surrealist dreamscape of sound and chess piece figures. The direction of smoke as it wafts between currents. Dark and moody, effecting a reverence of eastern influence, Ulrich's long beard pointing to rattling boxes. The deteriorating grey web of sculpture turning, a splash of green on swaying hips, writhing muscled back, catapulting dynamo and fractured electronics effect an hallucinogenic mind melt. Dense uncertainties pushed by cacophony. Confusing something that is nothing. It's like watching your fevered feelings take form through broken glass.
And finally, in stark contrast to all the night's dada terpsichore: Waxie Moon appears in a cloud of red tulle and proceeds to take it all off. It's not confusing at all...it's all gonna come off, but it's in the road trip to nakedness we revel. Drama and nuance directed full frontal. Sharp, elegant and high theatrics. A red sparkly puppet! Gleeful sofa bouncing! Matching flesh colored back-up dancers in a tightly choreographed smirk. The pay off is a standing O for Waxie. I need a shower!
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ZOE SCOFIELD IS AN OCTOPUS
I hopped out of my cab on Denny and beelined in heels through the graduates bubbling through the Seattle Center, I was going to miss the first performance but it was going to be quicker and a lot cheaper than staying in the cab. >Oh right, the viaduct is closed<. So I missed Erin Pike. But I settled into the top row of the studio stage in time to see her long legs in a short white dress and tennis shoes dissasembling her set of scribbled-on white boxes. At last she and a cohort each got under the two sides of two thin floor panels and with a rhythmic roll lifted them toward each other hoisted them and carried them off and this to me was a performance in itself, it was obviously practiced it was about human bodies interacting with the physics of objects in space and gravity and it was awesome.Yes I am geeking on a set teardown, what can I say it's all theater.I know Maureen Whiting. I know she had two babies in the last few years I know her husband is Indian yet I started the show in neutral. You will have to win me I thought. And there she was, flipping her shirt to flash post-partum belly owning the stage like an Indian goddess in a way that is peculiar to Maureen. She is a performer I would pay to watch stand on stage and flick her eyes at her partner at the audience at me at life. She can weep petulantly come on to her indifferent mate and grab her fur clothed loins all she wants I will watch and be won over. Singing as if to soothe themsleves to remind themselves of their human connectedness then wrenching themselves into contorted poses evocative of society matrons at 1960's cocktail parties, clawing their way through diatribes on death, embodying at times with their white dresses and crooning the archetypal female (veering to the clichéd) then skinning that trope in the next moment to reveal darker dirtier layers with muddied hems, an egg in the mouth, a voracious gulping of wine that drew an actual gasp of shock from a woman a seat away from me, the three members of the Portland Experimental Dance Theater convulse their way to a Gertrude Stein-like hysteria on the death of the Dodo and let that be a warning to us all (is this sentence long enough). Despite my desire to resist the hysteria the last line and the intensity of the delivery did something to me and I found to my surprise a hitch in my throat thinking about the last Dodo bird.Zoe Scofield is an octopus, she sticks to walls. To audio ruminations on Anne Sexton and pop art she climbs the back of the stage and writhes laconically as if she were on the floor in a way I find unreasonably satisfying. Perhaps it's about a need to watch a human body overcome the pedantic limitations of most and parkour around in space, which she does routinely with a refreshingly sharp level of balletic training, her hips wide her balance sure every muscle curling or extending as needed and it's a freaking joy to watch. Yet what I take from her performance with her tall and agile yet less angular partner Raja Feather Kelly is so much richer than gimmick, it connects humanly. How big is THAT? High quality physical training a refined artistic sensibility and the balls in a habitually sardonic hip self-referencing town to be romantic lyrical and expressive of true human connection? You deserve all the glory that comes your way.In addition the half plaster life cast by Ben Beres and Zac Culler downstage backed by piles of flowers seemed to me to invite an entire level of interaction on its own and I was half hoping she'd curl inside it but its static white presence worked as a visual presence echoing her body and cupping a bed of cut flowers. Also the surreal shimmer of reflection from the mirrored floor on the wall is an incidental element that could easily be a focus, it was gorgeous. Once again the teardown was a performance. I caught it on video as black clad stage hands with black brooms swept the flowers into black dustpans. Bonus show, man.And then I went upstairs to the Mainstage. And that's another story.
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