{"id":3938,"date":"2016-01-29T16:43:07","date_gmt":"2016-01-29T21:43:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/?p=3938"},"modified":"2016-01-30T10:16:17","modified_gmt":"2016-01-30T15:16:17","slug":"surviving-in-a-limbo-of-violent-dreams","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/2016\/01\/surviving-in-a-limbo-of-violent-dreams\/","title":{"rendered":"Surviving in a Limbo of Violent Dreams"},"content":{"rendered":"

VIM VIGOR DANCE COMPANY premieres Shannon Gillen’s Separati.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Members

Members of VIM VIGOR DANCE COMPANY in Shannon Gillen’s Separati<\/em>. (L to R): Lavinia Vago, Emma Whiteley, Jason Cianciulli, Laja Field, Martin D\u00fbrov. Photo: Yi-Chun Wu<\/p><\/div>\n

A Plexiglas phone booth sits marooned in the performing area of the Gelsey Kirkand ArtCenter\u2019s 400-seat black-box theater, glowing eerily in Barbara Samuels\u2019 lighting. As Shannon Gillen\u2019s Separati<\/em> for her VIM VIGOR DANCE COMPANY unfolds, I think of Edward Hopper\u2019s paintings of bleak, deserted city streets, or of people in restaurants or hotel rooms who are together only in the sense of temporarily sharing the same space.<\/p>\n

The five characters in this dance are stranded, but they can leave the vicinity of the phone booth at will and return\u2014maybe now with a coat or with their hair combed. Periodically, the phone rings, and it\u2019s not just the operator whose voice we hear. A scarily omniscient male voice\u2014God\u2019s or a shrink\u2019s or their own fears\u2014may tell one of them that the others know her secret, or advise another to calm down, that everything will be all right. The phone itself has a persona, able to hang threateningly in the air on what appears to be the usual flexible metal cord.<\/p>\n

And everything is definitely not all right. At this intersection of present discomfort, memories, and visions of the future, rage and violence erupt, transform, vanish, erupt again. The score by dancer Martin D\u00fbrov in collaboration with the choreographer hints at trains racing along, thunder, heavy footfalls, buried voices, radios beset by static. The strangeness of Gillen\u2019s vision is evident in the first few minutes. A woman (Laja Field), her black hair concealing her face, slowly approaches another (Lavinia Vago), who also hangs her head and whose face is also invisible. When Field gets to her destination, she reaches out and yanks Vago\u2019s short dress up (to inspect her? To shame her?). Yet within seconds, the two of them are dancing in unison, and shortly a third woman (Emma Whatley) joins them.<\/p>\n

\"Jason

Jason Cianciulli and Lavinia Vago in Shannon Gillen’s Separati<\/em>. Photo: Yi-Chun Wu<\/p><\/div>\n

Gillen embraces human awkwardness, wildness, risk\u2014all dark-toned by emotion. Her highly individual phrases of movement (made in collaboration with the dancers) has them thrashing and staggering, flinging their arms, twisting their legs together, wrenching themselves off balance, crashing to the floor, rolling, spinning. They seem out of control, even when we know they\u2019re not. They plunge into a somersault as if they\u2019re trying to avoid a truck that\u2019s bearing down on them. They can swerve from fury into tenderness and vice versa at the drop of a hat.<\/p>\n

Who are<\/em> these people with their hair-trigger tempers? We\u2019ll never know. Jason Cianciulli is wearing a three-piece, navy blue suit, while D\u00fbrov sports jeans, a t-shirt, and a punky haircut; a beer can is occasionally in his hand. A relationship may exist between Cianciulli and Vago. The three women wear skirts or dresses. That everyone goes barefoot is odd and a bit jarring, but the decision may have been a practical rather than an aesthetic one. The ways in which these people wrangle with each other, lift or throw a partner, flip someone head over heels necessitate a degree of self-preservation.<\/p>\n

Field and D\u00fbrov, as well as Gillen herself, have worked in Berlin with choreographer Johannes Wieland, and have, like him, embraced a ferocious intensity both physical and emotional. The other four dancers have risen marvelously to the occasion. Watching them for almost the entire hour-long piece, the spectators around me barely move, unable to predict what will happen next in this way station for hallucinatory encounters. Is this staggering person drunk or only lost in rapidly shifting terrain of his her own making? Who is the instigator and who the victim in this kill-or-be-killed duet? What do the passages of vigorous dancing that people drop into and out of signify\u2014the rituals of daily life? Did enemies just become friends? We seem to be seeing what might be fragments of different lives suddenly glued together. At times, performers freeze in mid-action, as if time has temporarily stopped for one of them. Footlights often give events the aura of a play; the phone booth performs its own dances by means of changing colored lights.<\/p>\n

\"Jason

Jason Cianciulli, Lavinia Vago, and bag. Photo: Yi-Chun Wu<\/p><\/div>\n

Gillen comes up with some brilliant ideas and devises some brilliant passage. In one scene, Vago enters, wearing a coat, and tosses her duffel bag at Cianciulli. He then throws the bag around in various ways, while she mimics the bag\u2019s moves, becomes the object. He intensifies this by dragging her around by her coat and dropping her in various places (she\u2019s limp); in the end he (terrifyingly) flips her over his head to the floor.<\/p>\n

In another scene, just as a woman\u2019s recorded voice says, \u201cHe made it almost fun,\u201d Cianciulli helps Whiteley step into a not-very-large cardboard carton that\u2019s been standing onstage, folds her down into it, and closes it up. What seems like a disturbingly long amount of time elapses before she emerges, staggering a bit and kicking one leg free of the box. \u201cWe\u2019ve all done shameful things,\u201d says the male voice.<\/p>\n

\"(L

(L to R): Martin D\u00fbrov, Lavinia Vago, Jason Cianciulli, and cigarettes in Shannon Gillen’s Separati<\/em>. Photo: Yi-Chun Wu<\/p><\/div>\n

Cianciulli, D\u00fbrov, and Vago join in a close, ever-evolving tangle of a trio, during which two lit cigarettes are constantly passed to two mouths, then plucked away and redistributed. You lose any sense of who, if anyone, is in control of these complex and daring maneuvers.<\/p>\n

The level of risk is high, and the performers\u2014whether dancing, speaking, lip-synching, or being pitched through the air and hammered to the ground\u2014rise to it magnificently. I have to say, though, that at some point, I thought Separati<\/em> was ending. It was when Vago, standing downstage told us that she was alone and sick of this place, while behind her, Field and Whiteley echoed her gestures. \u201cThat\u2019s it,\u201d she said, and the lights went out. That wasn\u2019t it, though. There was thunder and rain and wet hair, Field snaring her head and one arm in the black tights she\u2019d just removed, she and D\u00fbrov kissing in the phone booth, everyone staggering around.<\/p>\n

In the end, D\u00fbrov attacks everybody, one by one, and finally shoves all of them into the booth, as if he were making one last attempt to contain his demons. A powerful ending to a fascinating work. I admit, however, that some minutes before that, I\u2019d begun to feel numbed by the many violent, unresolving encounters. It\u2019s not that the dance was long, but it had begun to feel <\/em>long. Perhaps the vastly gifted Gillen wanted us to feel the pointlessness of almost random hostility and the fragility of apparent conclusions.<\/p>\n

\"Martin

Martin D\u00fbrov contemplates (L to R) Emma Whitely, Jason Cianciulli, Lavinia Vago, and Laja Field. Photo: Yi-Chun Wu<\/p><\/div>\n

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VIM VIGOR DANCE COMPANY premieres Shannon Gillen’s Separati. A Plexiglas phone booth sits marooned in the performing area of the Gelsey Kirkand ArtCenter\u2019s 400-seat black-box theater, glowing eerily in Barbara Samuels\u2019 lighting. As Shannon Gillen\u2019s Separati for her VIM VIGOR DANCE COMPANY unfolds, I think of Edward Hopper\u2019s paintings of bleak, deserted city streets, or […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3943,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[109,199],"tags":[1923,1915,1922,1916,1918,1917,1919,1920,1921],"class_list":{"0":"post-3938","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-contemporary-dance","8":"category-postmodern-views","9":"tag-barbara-samuels","10":"tag-emma-whitely","11":"tag-gelsey-kirkland-artcenter","12":"tag-jason-cianciulli","13":"tag-laja-field","14":"tag-lavinia-vago","15":"tag-martin-durov","16":"tag-shannon-gillen","17":"tag-vim-vigor-dance-company","18":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3938","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3938"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3938\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3947,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3938\/revisions\/3947"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3943"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3938"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3938"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3938"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}