Impact/The Gift

Last night’s VIDF show at the Roundhouse was a master class in solo performances. The full length dance solo is a difficult task – a single performer keeping an audience involved for 45 minutes. Last night offered us two perfect examples from opposite ends of the spectrum. The first piece seemed to be an example of how not to do a solo, and the second piece showed us how to fix almost every problem that the earlier piece experienced.

The set for Marc Boivin’s Impact consisted of one small white strip of flooring on the left side of the stage and a plexiglass window on the right. A projection screen was hanging at the back of the stage. Boivin entered the space very casually, glancing up and nodding at the audience as if to welcome us and thank us for coming. He then cautiously entered the white floor space, testing the water before plunging in. As he began a series of a few stereotypical modern steps, the video screen began to play a video of Boivin in a dance studio with two elderly individuals. While the smile on his face in the video seemed welcoming and human, his on stage presence was focused and closed off. It was here I first thought he seemed only willing to dance from the waist up. He towered above the stage on his very long legs and they often seemed much less engaged in the movement than his upper body. Perhaps this was done on purpose to help him conserve energy – it would have taken a considerable amount more effort to keep those long limbs in motion and he did seem to tire a bit toward the end. The movement was mostly repetitions of similar positions and they seemed to grow more and more lackluster with each repeat. That being said, the movement itself wasn’t particularly interesting and it seemed secondary to whatever it was Boivin was trying to say. This was his biggest misstep – if the dancing in a dance piece isn’t relevant to the concept, why is it there at all?

When the first section came to a close, Boivin left the white space and went to the back of the stage and thankfully changed outfits (what human being looks good in orange? It made him look like an inmate.) While he disrobed we were drawn out of the performance when two tech girls came out onto the stage. One rolled up the piece of white flooring, and the other sent the projection screen up into its case. I was already fairly disengaged from the work, and this did nothing to help my experience. I wasn’t sure why this set change didn’t happen in a blackout or why Boivin himself didn’t roll up that piece of flooring – either of these options would have been more desirable.

This was followed by the most interesting image of Impact. Boivin stood behind the plexiglass and a projection of his insides came up in front of him. He moved and spoke something inaudible while we watched his heart beat inside of him. He then stepped away from the screen as a fully formed version of himself was projected on the plexiglass. I couldn’t help but think the projected version of Boivin looked a bit like Voldemort - I had to stifle a giggle. The projected Boivin told a fragmented story while Boivin entered another bland phrase. It frustrated me – there was an experienced dancer/choreographer on stage but he seemed completely unwilling to push himself to try anything new. I watched him dance for nearly an hour and I still had no idea what he might look like as an individual mover. These self-choreographed pieces have a habit of winding up being as self-indulgent as they are uneventful. Here the focus seemed to be on the technology rather than the actual performance. The piece was apparently about the ‘connections between people’ and the ‘magnitude of their influence on one another,’ but any of that intention was lost on me. There were brief flickers of hope – when he started to convulse and gasp for air, or when his body suddenly aged as if he’d been pressed down by gravity for his entire lifetime, or when he groped at his crotch. These hopes were quickly erased by more by-the-numbers choreography. Boivin then informed us that he was almost finished, but that he had one more concept he wanted to try that he couldn’t find a place for in the piece, but also explaining that maybe it’s just not a very good idea in the first place. This seemed to explain a lot about the piece itself – it was disjointed and it didn’t really seem to lead anywhere. I thought the idea sounded like an interesting one - he explained to us that he was interested in seeing how the body reacts when someone speaks our name. He turned to the back and I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do…was I supposed to say his name? No one else seemed ready to shout MARC at him from the audience, so I remained silent. If I could go back in time I would have yelled at him – maybe it would have inspired a more meaningful sequence of movement (he stuck his arms out to the side and walked around like an airplane) and perhaps it would have made me feel somehow connected to the piece. Here again I wanted him to make his goal more clear.

After a brief intermission, I took my seat again. I couldn’t help but notice that the women who had been sitting beside and in front of me had both decided not to return for the second half of the show. I’ll admit my hopes for the second act weren’t high after the way the evening began but I could not have been more pleasantly surprised. As we braced for the worst, a tech girl dragged a giant cardboard box into the space and left it at center stage. She left and after a moment it began to rotate and shuffle sideways. The tech came back out and re-centered the box. This time when she had gone, the box abruptly moved toward the back of the room – running into the screen at the back of the stage before turning around and charging at the audience. I couldn’t stop laughing. It reminded me of Cousin Itt from the Addams Family, the way the box moved swiftly across the space with no visible feet. After the box tipped over on its side and Ida emerged, we were treated to a less comedic section that seemed to be represent his own birth. Clad in white shorts that looked like a diaper, he rolled out in the fetal position and slowly began to experiment with the ways he could control all the parts of his body – his gorgeously dexterous feet, each joint in each of his fingers. It was a blessing to finally see movement that had some meaning behind it. It all felt imperative, and after seeing an excellent demonstration of Ida’s humor, we knew he wasn’t taking himself too seriously. It was a childlike exploration, and it was a pleasure to watch Ida explore – his facility was superb.

Ida began to shiver and shake and a tech entered to give him a jacket, a scarf, and some shoes. My immediate thought was “oh, please don’t cover up those feet!” but the section that followed was exactly the opposite of what I’d envisioned. It seemed he wasn’t able to walk in the shoes, cartoonishly losing control of his knees and wobbling back towards his box. The tech re-entered and this time handed Ida a small box that was gorgeously wrapped in red paper. I had assumed ‘the gift’ had been Ida in the first place, since he emerged from a box himself. Now he was holding a present but he had no one to give it to. Then the tech entered the space again – this time holding a long flowery dress on the end of a stick. Ida began a hilarious flamenco inspired attempt at seducing the imaginary woman – at first a few shy pokes and prods, followed by him tearing into the box to present her with a pair of red high heels. The ‘woman’ left the space, and moments later her dress flew through the air and landed at Ida’s feet. He quickly tore off his own jacket and scarf, and was almost out of his white shorts before the high heel caught his attention. It became immediately phallic when he pressed it against his crotch (I couldn’t help but notice that both male soloists referenced their manhood during their pieces) and after an absurd moment of thrusting he flung the heel away as if ejaculating it. To say I thought this was brilliant would be a colossal understatement - I was in tears! And not for the last time.

The program notes for The Gift said only that the piece was dedicated to Ida’s sister, whose son passed away. When Ida climbed back into his box, a smaller box entered the space. This box was covered in painted stick figures, and had a single helium balloon floating above it. The way these two boxes interacted as father and child was somehow more human than anything we’d seen in Boivin’s piece. In Impact, Boivin felt alienated and the connections between him and the elderly couple (his parents?) was unclear and inconsequential. In The Gift we were treated to a similar overall theme – the fragility of life – but the relationship here was crystal clear. When the boxes stood side by side with only their feet sticking out – Ida’s bare feet and the child’s bright yellow rubber boots – I burst into tears again. The feet slowly edged toward each other before the sounds of a storm filled the room. Ida’s box sprang into action, trying to surround the smaller more defenseless box, to protect it. Sadly, he wasn’t able to combat whatever force was at work, and as the smaller box tipped over and the lights faded we saw the single helium balloon float upward into the rafters. I couldn’t help but wonder how many people were experiencing situations like this in Japan as I watched. It seemed incredibly timely, and made the piece even more potent.

When the lights come back up, we watched Ida slowly creep out from under his box. He looked a bit like a snail with it sitting on his back. The tech covered the smaller box with a black sheet, effectively turning what was once a joyous celebration of childhood innocence into a coffin. Ida placed the yellow rubber boots on top of the casket and tried to push it out of the space as the lights faded again. I thought this was the end, but the lights came up once more – this time Ida was perched on a small red table where he began to eat a bowl of noodles. Neatly placed on the floor next to the table were his shoes, the red heels, and the yellow rubber boots. This memory of the happy family next to his pathetic current state seemed to say that life would go on for those of us left behind. It was hopeful in spite of the incredible sadness that had filled the room. Then the tech covered Ida in a black sheet and carried him off stage.

So that was it – two very different solos (to be fair, The Gift wasn’t really a solo. Though the only face we saw was Ida’s, the tech crew’s involvement was as important to the success of the performance as anything.) One incredibly enjoyable solo, one much less so. My thanks to Barbara and Jay for choosing to show these pieces on the same night. The similarities on paper mixed with the differences on stage were a very interesting juxtaposition that left me with a lot to consider. For those of you who left after the first act - I hope you regret it!