NW New Works Festival: The Return of the Repressed

What people call the "traditional" disciplines of music, dance, theater etc. have actually only been separate disciplines for a comparatively short period of time. From the Ancient Chinese and Hellenic Greeks all the way until the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution, such specialized categories simply did not exist. In various African languages there are no separate words for music and dance and theater. Beyond the atomization of art into commercial labels, beyond the sterile notion that there actually need to be over two hundred "genres" to describe warring factions of music, theater or dance, contemporary artists are rediscovering the vitality inherent in a holistic idea that treats artistic activity as unified. That holistic approach is the oldest surviving tradition in the arts and in most of the world, it remains the mainstream of tradition.

In its 28th season, NW New Works Festival at On the Boards continues to mine this eclectic approach. Some artists work "traditionally" within a certain discipline. Some artists work nominally within one discipline but draw heavily from others. Still others work in that fertile area where disciplines intersect and defy immediate classification. Rather than this being what some people would call a dilution of the disciplines it is in fact a return to the roots.

By definition as well as by endeavor, NW New Works Festival has always been a mixed bag. This is not a weakness, but rather a strength. Within the space of two weekends, the festival offers a rather fine survey of contemporary themes across the arts.

The Studio Showcase this first weekend of the festival features four shows, two of which are nominally theater pieces, two of which are nominally dance. All four of them, however, tend toward a similar abstract quality: they are all based primarily on images rather than text.

The text part of Kate Sanderson Holly's Multiverse in fact is the weakest part of the evening. Ms. Holly has chosen a beautiful series of images to fill the stage. Her accompanying monologue, however, is ludicrous. While also filled with imagery, the words are simultaneously pompous and trite, bordering not quite comfortably on the boundary of parody but without the commitment. Describing in a quaint, affected, girlish voice the human inability to grasp the flow of time using the metaphor of an ant crawling across a gingham tablecloth strikes me as sophomoric, not unlike the discussions of high school potheads who have suddenly discovered quantum mechanics. It is unfortunate, because Ms. Holly's visual sense creates a lovely hypnotic and rich realm where words are quite unnecessary. I'd prefer to have her concentrate on her strengths - which are considerable.

Kyle Loven's piece, When You Point at the Moon, also relies upon stage pictures. By his own admission, Mr. Loven refers to his work as a theater of images and the description is apt. With a unique combination of puppetry, pantomime and magic lantern projection, When You Point at the Moon creates a surreal world of archetypal images that are never obvious and always fresh, connected illogically as in a daydream - or a nightmare. Mr. Loven's work over the past couple years in Seattle has shown him to be one of the true remaining stage magicians in our city. When You Point at the Moon continues his exploration effectively and one can hardly wait to see where his journey takes him next.

Alice Gosti's new work, Are You Still Hungry? is the evening's spectacle. A visual essay on the latent violence in three women, Ms. Gosti's piece mixes the stiff, formal rigidity of minimalist dance with the brutality of a Grand Guignol opera. The eerie music of Angelo Badalamenti helps create an unnerving mood in which the theatrics explode. The piece is quite harsh. It is also quite funny, with a subtle wit behind the grandiose spectacle. And everyone loves spaghetti.

The stand-out piece for me, though, is Christin Call's newest piece with the Coriolis Dance Collective, try to hover. The experience of women enduring an oppressive medical-pharmaceutical industry has been the subject of a few pieces recently, most obviously Elizabeth Kenny's Sick. Here the Coriolis group use the imagery of the birth process, psychodrama, nursing and the machine-like nature of the medical complex to evoke the dread, the attendant loss of control, the annihilation of identity that hospitals often promote. It is an extremely complex piece. Coriolis often employ the dance equivalent of musical polyphony - multiple staging areas, movements in and out of phase with each other, mimetic gestures that proceed like a musical canon - and they employ them with an exquisite richness. Even the use of spoken, overlapping monologues by the dancers contributes to this polyphonic - "polypraxic"? - effect. It is a piece in which it would be nearly impossible to grasp everything in one viewing. Its effect is profound and truly beautiful and certainly attains the transformative quality Ms. Call attempts. I look forward eagerly to their future works.

Imagery unifies all four of the studio pieces in this first weekend of NW New Works Festival. But the word is present as well, even in places (such as the Coriolis dance piece) where words are traditionally treated as an intrusion. This, too, is part of the rich reward to be achieved when artists of all disciplines put aside their labels and do not merely appropriate pieces of other disciplines, but truly incorporate them into a unified work of art. It may be unfashionable among would-be critics to accept this erasure of the lines between neat categories. But then, artists should never stand beholden to labels. They should simply do what calls them to do. Eventually the audiences, and even the critics, will catch up.