This weekend I attended Lingo’s world premiere of Relatively Real.  I am very happy to finally see one of their full-length pieces in its entirety as I have heard so much about their work from so many people.  I was really happy to see a full house and hope that they were as successful in attendance all of the other nights.  (Lingo is a dance and theater company that needs to be seen!)  And not just in Seattle.  I hope that as many and more people come to see performances from out of town artists, as this is a critically vital element for any artist and art community.  Basically I can’t believe that John Jasperse and other out of town artists didn’t sell out every night, but that’s a whole other subject….

Okay: First, the title.  I found the title very intriguing and was eager to see how they would approach both physically and visually the idea of reality in identity.  Except for a the men posturing masculinity in shoulder pads, women flaunting and teasing in go-go boots and Bianca’s (too) brief solo speaking about her piercing I didn’t get much of a feeling of their exploration of reality and identity.  I am not dismissing the piece in this comment only mentioning it because it threw me off and colored how I came into watching the piece.  (It might be my tendency to cling to titles as guides to work.  I haven’t decided if this is helpful or a hindrance in both mine and other’s work.)

Walking into the theater was great.  I loved the set and never grew tired or used to/bored by it for the entirety of the piece.  The panels had a life of their own and became as integral to the piece as the dancers, music and costumes.  KT did an excellent job in her use of the panels to separate, revel, disclose, and draw the audience into the piece.  Unfortunately a few times there was so much going on in the space that by their sheer size the panel’s movement took attention away from the dancers and their interactions. 

The dancers in Lingo are diverse, talented, well rehearsed and delightfully individual in their interpretation of the movement and in what they bring to the work.  I really enjoyed seeing the intense physical dancing and movement that flowed seamlessly from one thing to the next.  No dancer labored over or made the intense duets and choreography “tricky” or “showy”.  I never felt like I was being set up by them to watch a bunch of difficult movement that I could guess was going to happen.  Does that make sense?  I don’t want to watch a bunch of laborious or gratuitous preparation; I just want to watch the movement. 

At times there was so much going on in the space that I felt like I had to choose between watching several different interactions.  Perhaps concentrating the ideas, movement and visuals through editing the amount of stuff happening on stage at once will help this.  It was clear that the dancers had a clear intention, direction and desired outcome.  This didn’t really come through in the overall piece though.  But I think that everyone’s desired intentions will solidify and become more apparent to the viewer as they work stuff out, perform and become more at home with the piece.  At least that has always been my experience as a performer. 

I really enjoyed the revealing and intriguingly personal solos.  I want more- more of the solos and more depth and time in each of them.  I was shocked by the bizarrely revealing nature of Aiko’s, Bianca’s and KT’s solo.  It was too short for me to find a foot hold in and not short enough to be left as is.

All and all, good work.  I know they worked incredibly hard and that dedication, tenacity and hard work show.  I wish them continued success in all of their future performances.

Thanks.

The press materials for this piece (that I also helped to create) were provoking – who do you think you are?; tackling alter-ego and androgyny; identity and reality questioned. It made me nervous about seeing this piece. I could see immediately that there were a lot of elements going into it. First there are the big themes of identity and reality to address, but then there is also an original score, costumes, set design, animation, voice/text. It seems that as of late artists are trying to make their work extremely multi-media and rarely do I see it done well. Expectations seemed to be running high for this piece with previews in The Seattle Times, Seattle Weekly and The Stranger. That said, I was intrigued, concerned and curious to how this would all turn out.

I wasn’t in love with everything I saw. Maybe because I am a dancer I enjoyed much more the pure dance sequences; when there wasn’t words or overt costumes to hinder me from seeing the relationships and nuances being built on stage. The company is built from a really strong group of dancers whom you can tell have been working hard and with eachother to fine tune their performance. I appreciated being able to see them work as a group, in quartets, trios, duos and solos much more than watching them try to tell me something or make me laugh. Although I do think those parts did make the dancing stronger as it was a way to compare the two elements and provide a vehicle for the audience to use to help them better gauge the depth, “reality” and honesty being performed. So, perhaps it was essential, albeit not always my favorite.

It seems like the subtleties in the piece far outshined the bigger, more provocative elements. The animation surprised me, I wasn’t sure about the idea of using animation with dance but, it worked for me. It had such a specific style and quality the it felt like a separate voice in the piece commenting and supporting the dancers. It aided the viewer rather than distract which was what initially worrisome to me.

Other subtleties. The pure craft of it. I think KT did an amazing job especially with the ending. The movement phrase were manipulated, repeated and used spacially very successfully. It made me remember how much of a craft choreography can be and how much stronger it makes the performance when it is done well. I think choreographers can get too wrapped up in either finding “cool” movements/partnering or emotional states for the performers to reach. The structure of the choreography gave the performers room to grow individually and as a group allowing them to find the emotionality of the piece much more naturally. In between structure and improv there lied a place where they were always a group and always individuals. It was lovely to see. I think the set and it’s mobility also aided the choreography throughout the entire piece making it that much stronger in changing the viewers perspective and shifting qualities of the performance pretty smoothly.

I wouldn’t say the piece met the press materials expectations, but I’m glad they didn’t. High expectations often let us down, rarely are met and aren’t really “real”.