by Aaron Ellis
The piece [SHORE] is beautiful and wondrous and wanderous and intriguing; welcoming, inviting, and yet private and hidden at the same time.
I love how the three movers-and-shakers [dancers] embrace their heavy breathing/fatigue, even accentuate it, channel it and augment the performance with it... It makes me think of stamina, and its limits, and how we deal with its limits.
Limits, and dealing with limits, seemed to me to be a motif that ran throughout the performance.
For how long can we stomp around, virulent/frantic/big/loud/intense, before we come to a rest? For how long can we rest, still, lying on the ground, before we flail frantically and ecstatically, moving fast as if having a seizure?
What are the limits to our intimacy?
From hand-holding and face-to-face stillness to stomping and waving while embracing one another, wearing winter jackets... From approaching one another in order to stay close, to approaching one another only to touch hands and move on....move on....move on...
But yeah, I want to know what sounds we've forgotten and then sing! Sounds our mothers made as we came forth; are they the sounds you make on stage? The breathing? The grunting? I think they are. But I want to hear them louder, maybe. I want to hear them sung. I want to hear them projected through the back wall of the theatre! Or maybe recorded and looped? I liked Emily speaking the story live, I liked that very much - it amplified on-stage sounds beyond just the words she said...