Great Urban Spaces: Days of Secret Pop Up Modern Dance Shows
Great Urban Spaces: Days of Secret Pop Up Modern Dance Shows
Kick Off Party
February 4, 2011
Voci Dance
Movement Arts Studio, Orlando FL</strong>
I opened with a faux pas and called the parking lot a “Parking Lot.” Silly me, the gravel underfoot was a “Performance Space.” Hoping to do better, I checked in to the Artsfest desk, as a woman across the macadam read tarot under a cloud of votive lights. The action had already begun, a few dancers moved in the courtyard full of cement vases and rusty cupids. As an impossible large bustle appeared, a projector illuminated the corrugated wall with images of corsets, Victorian dancing, and tentacle porn. The audience stood quietly with muted conversations recalled a funeral viewing. Once the bustle dressing was complete, and the dancers herded us inside where a woman in grey silk was tied to a divan. Black yarn bound her, and she writhed and moaned as the dancers flitted around her. We moved past her as the yarn snapped, and she laughed, quietly but manically. To the right was s donation bar, to the left, the heart of performance art.
Inside the main hall, cloth hung from the ceiling and a miasma of chandeliers and bird cages recalled Oscar Wilde’s drawing room. The themes of “I need to speak to you” and “You are cruel” fleshed out the motion, and as the four dancers writhed a matronly seamstress pulled fabric off the ceiling and dressed them. There were lot and lots of knots, and dark clanging music underlining the couture. Scatter applause nipped the air, but the show isn’t over: even more knots of black yarn bind all together until motion snaps them all asunder once more. I’m suspecting symbolism here, but it might just be post modernism. Or modern dance. It’s so hard to tell these days.
More pop up dances are scheduled this week, check http://www.facebook.com/#!/vocidance for time and locations. Or you can see more about them at http://www.vocidance.org
