Brenda Way’s world premiere of After the Deluge crowned ODC’s Dance Downtown season—an enticing, lyrical performance inspired by the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, reflecting the heroism and kindness that arise in the face of disaster. The magnitude of this event was amplified by the scale of the scenic projections—grainy images of frozen water, cracked clay, and porous stones pummeled by the sea—enhanced by the equally sturdy and fluid ensemble and the choreography’s sweeping momentum. Equally up to the task was Kyo Yohena’s costume design, which complemented the back scrim projections, changing wardrobe as the images evolved, beginning with silky pastels and ending with soiled white cottons. The opening wash of pastels—the innocence before disaster strikes—was luscious, melting the distinction between projections and dancers.
The playlist also defined the space between electronic and classical music, with Nils Frahm’s pounding, repetitive piano, a style somewhere between Philip Glass and Meredith Monk. Max Richter’s moody chordal piano and string quintet—overlaid with Morse code recordings and crackling walkie-talkie voices, along with Michael Gordon’s frenzied violin strings, propelled tableaux and wave-like progressions across the stage. Most alluring was a sequence in which dancers lunged into collapse onto the floor before being dragged away by their ankles by the dancer behind them, only to hypnotically repeat the action again and again like the ebb and flow of the tides—the expansion and contraction of nature, the rising and falling of civilizations and artifice. In moments such as this, I wanted to linger, to hold onto these evocative impressions, but segments were sharply edited, always compelling the dance forward.
Knowing Brenda Way’s love of Laurie Anderson’s music, it was surprising she didn’t incorporate Anderson’s Landfallwith the Kronos Quartet—a meditation on loss, memory and destruction following Hurricane Sandy—all themes resonant with After the Deluge, but also, the uplifting nature of humans under pressure, shown through dancers’ lifts and the compassionate picking up and lowering down of one another.
The piece ended quietly and tenderly with a duet by Colton Wall and Jeanna Marie—one of the few duets in the work and a much-needed space away from the full ensemble. This otherwise perfect ending was strangely overshadowed by Marie’s young-professional wardrobe—a pastel skirt and long-sleeved button-down blouse that at times overwhelmed Wall, unintentionally covering him or exposing too much of her during wide lateral-split lifts. The narrative up to this point had only been suggested, but here it suddenly felt literal—something the choreography had otherwise avoided, leaving the relationship between Wall and Marie ambiguous. The curtain came down like a bemused question mark to well-deserved applause.
The second premiere, Caught in the Act, conceived and directed by San Francisco legend Gypsy Snider (The Pickle Family Circus, The 7 Fingers), was everything you’d expect from…a clown—a riveting mix of theatre, circus antics, dance acrobatics, and plenty of gimmicks, some to grimace at and others to laugh at out loud. Here the stage had no boundaries, with dancers approaching it from the audience as audience members before running around and through a brash gold metallic tinsel-fringe party backdrop, taking turns at a microphone stand with something—or nothing—to say. “I can’t believe I paid for this.” “It’s impossible being a Pisces surrounded by Cancers!”
In this Felliniesque, teen-spirit extravaganza the full ensemble gets a workout, carrying a single balloon into the audience, tumbling off others’ shoulders, crowd-surfing over uplifted arms, standing still in a Chorus Line-like row, sending another balloon drifting into the audience and sadly watching it float away, then stage-diving into dancers now taking over the orchestra pit. Caught in the Act knows no shame. A balloon pops.
The score likewise has everything happening at once, ranging from electronic dance music with pounding club beats to Nino Rota-ish vaudevillian overlays.
The dancers move beautifully as an ensemble, speaking a unified physical vocabulary. Though each distinguishes themselves at the microphone stand and in other throwaway moments, they move together like a single organism, animated by the same pleasure. Still, Ja’Moon Jones shimmers—their technical prowess, presence, timing, and sassy comic charisma impossible to miss.
Eight months after its premiere, Mia J. Chong’s Theories of Time returned with several additions: a new opening piece, Prelude to Robert M by Pascal Schumacher, and live music performed throughout by Andy Meyerson and Travis Andrews. Minna Choi (founder of the Magik*Magik Orchestra) also created arrangements of the four selected pieces. These additions—along with more rehearsal time, a larger stage, and Thomas Bowersox’s dramatic lighting—gave this third ensemble work a maturity it previously lacked. Yet what remains a mystery is how the choreography holds the dancers back, keeping them earthbound even when speed and altitude are working in their favor.
David e. Moreno
