The show hadn’t even started and I was already in awe: Brian Brooks and Philip Trevino had created an installation that occupied the entire stage and from any seat you could see hundreds of red “cloth strands stretched across the stage–creating a strobe-like flurry of actions captured, suspended and broken apart” (to quote the program). Even more captivating was that the theater—Fisher Space, one of the smaller theaters at BAM where the seating is modular and varies according to each new show—was set up to bring to bring the stage and the audience very close together, with only a narrow long strip of dance floor as a stage and a few rows of seating on each side. In the beginning dancers crossed the stage with pedestrian movements, walking with pauses during which they would lean into the fabric, or sideways in a group of three with someone standing on both partner’s palms in the middle. Each movement was repeated several times to form a motif, revolving around linear body shapes directly facing the audience. Each pattern, however, was given an extra dimension by the use of the red spider web decor. At first, the dancing seemed purely to demonstrate the […]
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