NW New Works Fest, Week 2: The Mainstage
Amelia Reeber's "this is a forgery" at the NW New Works Festival at On the Boards. Photo by Tim Summers.
The Northwest New Works Festival, showcasing top NW dance and performance talent, wrapped up this weekend at On the Boards. Up next, they have the summer edition of 14/48: The World's Quickest Theatre Festival in late July, and until June 30, you can still get their early subscriber special for next year's season.
this is a forgery, Amelia Reeber. Seattle dancer Amelia Reeber delivered a rich and interesting multimedia performance about being a fake. Video elements, including footage of a cat (presumably named "Sylvia Rabbit," per the mysterious program), add a comic element. The stand-out movement, though, was the closing. Reeber performed with gauze wrapped tightly around her calves. Tying the ends of each off to an anchor placed downstage-right, she proceeded into a complex movement slowly unraveling the gauze turn after another, until she had exited up-left. For a moment, the strands of gauze, still taut, dangle in the air, until the cat (in the projection) lunges at them. A clever and brilliant bit of choreography.
Home, Scott/Powell Performance. If there was a weaker bit to the night, it was this. Scott/Powell is a well-established dance and performance group here in Seattle with a fine reputation, but in comparison to the rest of the lineup, Home felt like it lacked cohesiveness. An ensemble of dancers performed a series of solo or duet movements, many involving either plastic bag costumes or tutus. The work was fragmentary and abstract, and seemed oddly lacking in personality.
Audible, 605 Collective. Hell yeah! After an hour of interpretive dance pieces heavy on long, slow, languid movements, 605 Collective emerged like an antidote, kicking it up more than a few notches. The five dancers that comprise 605 are electrifying, delivering an athletic, fast-paced, personality-driven snippet from a 60-minute work to debut at the Dancing on the Edge Festival in July. If you live in Vancouver, B.C., don't miss these people. Influenced by everything from hiphop to ballet, they delivered in a stunning way.
Old Girl, Zoe|Juniper. We have no idea what this piece was about, but Zoe Scofield is an incredible dancer and movement artist. With three other dancers, Scofield delivers a stunning demonstration of what the human body, fine-tuned as an artistic instrument, is capable of. In one long movement, Scofield performs herself being pulled across the downstage area. Sitting in the front row, you find yourself unable to take your eyes off her feet and calves, throbbing with tension as she maintains herself still as a stone in painstaking constructed poses. Contrast with the soundtrack (a theme throughout many of the dance performances) offered some comic levity, but overall this was a piece about and thoroughly dominated by the skills of the talented dancers.
