OMG! Manifold Motion is Awesome!
Bridget Gunning on the silk and Nicole Sasala on the floor. Photo by Divide.
Manifold Motion's ability to work magic with yarn puts to shame all the stitchin', bitchin' hipsters whose facility with knitting needles has never exceeded the ability to make scarves. Part meditation on our hyper-mediated culture, part paean to the arts and crafts movement, Manifold Motion's Woolgatherer is a stunningly imaginative dance performance that's more than worth the drive to West Seattle.
Woolgatherer is basically an Alice in Wonderland-type story: a modern woman, performed by dancer Bridget Gunning, suffers a technologically influenced mental breakdown in the first movement. Joined by dancers Keely Isaak Meehan and Nicole Sasala, all dressed in rather sterile black-and-white clothes, Gunning performs an increasingly erratic series of movements against a computer-generated series of images projected across a large white screen behind the stage. The score, heavy on high-end computer sounds, is actually a bit painful to listen to, but it works.
But this sort of concept isn't new. We've seen it plenty of times with smaller, local dance-performance groups, who use similar scores and similar (if somewhat less refined) multimedia technology. It's not original, and five or so minutes in, we were getting worried that this would be a let down. Then, reaching the fever-pitch of her mental anguish, Gunning collapses, tearing down the screen, and revealing a brilliantly conceived alter-reality achieved through yarn.
Two spectral figures work a spindle and a loom atop opposite towers. Great garlands of wool yarn, puffy and distressed, cascade down from the platforms and grow from trees. The color palette is every bit as natural (dulls greens and browns) as the initial movement was high-tech. The contrast is brilliantly achieved.
The rest of the show focuses on Gunning's interaction with this new reality, which by turns seduces and repels her. Sasala and Meehan each deliver a powerhouse performance in this section. Sasala, a dancer and aerialist, performs a marvelous bit on the aerial silks, folding herself into the fabric upside down, hanging like a bat, only to unfold out to seduce Gunning. Meehan performs a sort of seductive cage dance from inside a column of yarn garlands. Sara McChristian's lighting work in the show is simply fantastic, as this scene displays.
Pressed, we'd admit we've seen better choreography and movement before. But the crew who produced this marvel seem to realize that, too, and instead of treating their dancers as virtuosos capable of carrying the show themselves, they wisely incorporated numerous production elements, came up with ways to play to the performers' strengths and minimize weaknesses, and ultimately came up with something that's more powerful and affecting than dance normally manages.
