Photo by Jenna Marti
The opening night of Danceworks’ Art To Art was hurt by technical problems unacceptable in a showcase of multimedia experiment. The program’s noble goals deserve more care from its producers.
Writer Chad Piechocki and composer Neil Davis needed a soundman. The autobiographical text of “Etymology of Desire (How I want to write a piece about St. Valentine)” was drowned in gorgeous music. The six electric guitarists played superbly, but when Piechocki opened his heart to the audience in speech, we couldn’t hear him well enough to follow.
Next, someone needed to re-aim the film projector. Instead, the audience viewed the lower half of Sandy Manikowski’s film of choreographer Devin Settle dancing along wild seacoast and in lovely woodland. Dancing live onstage, Settle watched it, too. Perhaps it deepened her performance, adding fresh relevance to a work that contrasts a cramped, anxious present with the memory of creative breathing space. Settle danced beautifully to good music by Will Rose and Alex Shah.
The program’s most accomplished work, “Women’s History,” by composer Deanna Gibeau and writer Kristin Bayer, is a theatrical oratorio about a 9-year-old Wisconsin girl’s awakening to the sufferings of women worldwide and her determination to make a difference. The unaccompanied singing of the UW-Washington County Women’s Choir with soloists Michal Gerard and the composer was impeccable. Well-staged throughout, the final image of solidarity among the intergenerational, all-female cast was powerful as they sang the words of Pakistani activist Malala Yousafzai: “I am not a lone voice; I am many.” Maddeningly, the misaimed projector sent the accompanying visual art by Gibeau’s daughter Sophie into the rafters.
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Even the no-tech Enso Collective suffered when the lighting designer had to cross the stage to plug in a lamp as they started their improvised performance. Nonetheless, guitarists BJ Szyjakowski and Jim Guarnaccio, and dancers Emma Call and Maria Tordoff followed their own and one another’s instincts in credible ways. Their “2 For The Years” was restorative.
Filmmaker Kym McDaniel corrected the projector’s aim for “Visitor,” her surrealistic collaboration with dancer Madeleine Schoch. A passage in which Schoch, live, spins against her spinning, filmed image was thrilling. Toward the end, vulnerability tipped toward weirdness, but this work holds real promise.
Nerves, I think, dulled young Kelsey Lee’s comic solo performance about growing pains. “Pretty Thoughts,” by choreographer Kyra Renee with many collaborators, was multimedia overkill with fascinating dancing by high school students.
