![\"Andrea](\"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/AJ-11-130925_Gallim_011.jpg\")
<\/a>Andrea Miller’s Fold Here<\/em>. Caroline Fermin and Dan Walczak on couch. Emily Terndrup at right. Photo: Yi-Chun Wu<\/p><\/div>\n In titling her wild new work Fold Here<\/i>, Andrea Miller of Gallim Dance Company must have been thinking of all the implications of the instructions. Folding along prescribed creases makes a flat sheet of corrugated cardboard into a three-dimensional carton, and there are plenty of such boxes in Fold Here. <\/i>Some form a tall wall; others can be carried onto the stage and used to build towers that can easily be knocked down or dismantled. A woman can be folded in an attempt to stuff her into a box. Putting a box over someone\u2019s head erases, to a degree, that person\u2019s identity. Boxes can come between friends.<\/p>\n Cardboard cartons, like relationships, are deceptively sturdy. It\u2019s almost shocking how easy it is to tear them apart or drench them until they lose their shape. Folding can also mean giving up on a lost cause or conceding a fight. Think of Kenny Rogers\u2019 advice to a novice gambler: \u201cYou got to know when to hold ’em, know when to fold ’em,\/ Know when to walk away, know when to run.\u201d\u00a0 Another line from the song is also pertinent: \u201cknowin’ what to throw away and knowin’ what to keep.\u201d<\/p>\n Miller\u2019s program note is on a more intellectual plane. The last lines of Juan Rengito-Borrero\u2019s short poem \u201cFold\u201d declare: \u201cWithout hands and without feet\/ you are a square.\/ With time you are a cube.\/\u00a0 With feelings,\/ It\u2019s a box.\u201d\u00a0 And, on a more visceral level, Miller, like any woman who has just carried a child for nine months, understands what it means to be<\/i> a box, contents unknown.<\/p>\n Montclair State University\u2019s Peak Performances is the principal commissioner of Fold Here<\/i>, and the world premiere took place at the New Jersey institution\u2019s Alexander Kasser Theatre. Local theater goers, students, and those who travel from New York City via train (weekdays only), special bus (weekends only), or car know that they can expect to see bold work, and Fold<\/i> is something of a departure for <\/i>Miller, in that it involves tons of \u201cstuff,\u201d courtesy of Miller\u2019s collaborators: projection and video designer Tal Rosner; Jon Bausor, who\u2019s credited with the set concept; lighting designer Robert Wierzel; costume designer Jenny Lai; and composer and sound designer, Andrzeij Przybytkowski.<\/p>\n Against the “wall:” (L to R): Eric Berey (partly hidden), Dan Walczak, Matthew Perez, Austin Pendleton, Allysen Hooks, Daniel Staaf (partly hidden), Emily Terndrup. Photo: Yi-Chun Wu<\/p><\/div>\n Fold Here<\/i> is also freighted with elusive meanings\u2014or rather, meanings that are obvious, yet presented so strangely that we have to re-think what we perceive. As the piece begins, colored squares of light flash and re-pattern on the two panels facing us; later we will glimpse such familiar images as a brick wall, a black cat, a white house, as well as more abstract, often beautiful ones. The nine dancers\u2014or some of them\u2014first appear as silhouetted figures running back and forth across the stage as if searching for something. Then four banks of five lights each illuminate them where they huddle against a large wall of boxes set on a diagonal. There\u2019s something stop-and-start about their dancing lives. They move vigorously, then freeze. At times, they are as jerky as robots or malleable dolls; they may have problems coordinating their limbs for the task at hand; their legs collapse under them.<\/p>\n Near the beginning of the piece, Matthew Perez\u2014skinny and a head taller than anyone else onstage\u2014gives an amazing display of folding, melting, caving in. His knees and ankles keep collapsing, pulling him to the floor. He seems fearful. He also, surprisingly, walks slowly, bent over like an old man. While he\u2019s busy folding himself up, Allysen Hooks creeps onto the stage.\u00a0 She stands stiffly and blankly while he moves her; he gets her onto his back and crawls away with her. Meanwhile others bring boxes and build a new structure. A resting person\u2019s legs stick out from a gap at the bottom.<\/p>\n Francesca Romo with box, Allysen Hooks, and Matthew Perez in Fold Here<\/em>. Photo: Yi-Chun Wu<\/p><\/div>\n Fold Here<\/i> begins to seem like a series of\u00a0 \u201cacts,\u201d an absurdist vaudeville, when Francesca Romo (a co-founder of Gallim and its associate director) embarks on a dithery solo, kicking Perez out of her way. She twitches and staggers, romps and flirts, clearly aiming her performance at us. She also speaks, garbling her words and growling and squeaking them in ways that render her more or less unintelligible. She has trouble holding a box. The tension between her emotional and intellectual disarray and a recording of Glenn Gould\u2019s crystalline playing of the theme of Bach\u2019s Goldberg Variations<\/i> is both unnerving and provocative.<\/p>\n The other performers are never out of sight for long. Romo tussles with Caroline Fermin over a box, and attempts other hopeless\u00a0 missions. If this were really a vaudeville, she would have been pulled offstage by \u201cthe hook\u201d minutes ago. But choreographer Miller has another strategy. One set of boxes collapses, the dancers rush around like headless chickens, and the front curtain starts to descend. Suddenly Romo, this irritating, slightly disarming woman who\u2019s been messing with us, gets beneath the curtain and stops it by holding it over her head with one hand. Finally it rises. Our heroine.<\/p>\n Now the subject becomes acquisitiveness and how boxed in we may be by our possessions and our roles and our relationships. The projections briefly show the layout of an apartment, and we get an initial overview of a room. That is, the white couch on which Emily Terndrup is attempting to lie is placed on end against the main \u201cwall,\u201d and other furnishings (a card table, folding chairs, a pot of flowers) are stacked there too. A scratchy recording of \u201cTake All of Me\u201d plays (actually we eventually hear two recordings: one by Louis Armstrong and His Orchestra, one by Billie Holiday).<\/p>\n As the performers arrange the furniture in a semblance of domesticity, they often get glued to the pieces or to each other. To one side, in what might be a wan comedy routine, Terndrup tries to pull her foot off the wall of boxes, only to get her hand stuck. Sitting on the couch, she and Dan Walczak hold their hands over their mouths and look as if they\u2019re about to venture a kiss through these barricades. But no.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/a>