SFDanceworks Shatters Expectations With “A Broken Glass”
Sheldon Smith
I get nervous about contemporary dance. I’ve had countless hours of circuitous discussions with students and other dance folks about the problematic but sometimes helpful nature of various labels. When did “modern” dance become “contemporary” dance? Presumably both things could refer to that which is of the most current moment. It’s not old. It’s modern. It’s not retro or oldfangled or obsolete, its contemporary. But weirdly (or not, I dunno), at some point contemporary dance seemed to collapse into itself. Its label became not a marker of invention but a container of various conventions.* It also took on various regional identities…is it west coast, east coast or European contemporary?
I also, unfairly, have an irrational fear of repertory dance companies. I have sat through too many disorienting evenings of dances that mostly seem to highlight the ability of the cast to rapidly grab a swig of water and shed one unitard for another. And the names of the companies too often have a generic quality to them and pr that leaves me grouchy and unlikely to leave the house. In reality though, more such groups should exist, not fewer. Obviously, we live in a culture that grossly undervalues dance such that 99.99% of all dances ever made evaporate immediately after a single weekend of performances. So, anything that helps sustain the life of a well-made dance over time should be lauded and I need to get over myself.
I had plenty of time to think about these things over the 90 minutes I was stuck in traffic trying to cross San Francisco to get to ODC Theater. I was headed there to see A Broken Glass, by internationally acclaimed choreographer Bryan Arias presented and performed by the repertory company SFDanceworks as a part of ODC Theater’s State of Play Festival. Somewhere, somehow, I had the presence of mind to remind myself that I was going there to witness something on its own terms, that I needed to be open to the work itself coming to me, that I needed to arrive, breathe, be in community and be ready to resonate with the work.
What I witnessed was one of the most gorgeously executed, carefully crafted and mesmerizing dances I have seen in a long time. The work gave me hope for the art of dance in general and while certainly rooted in identifiable markers of contemporary dance, there was also a deep mix of inventiveness, cultural tradition and choreographic influences that explodes any attempt at easy categorization. The performers were extraordinarily virtuosic yet danced with an incredible sense of grounded humility. It is rare that I see something with this level of technical prowess that doesn’t also come across as overtly showy or ego driven. On the contrary, A Broken Glass, even though it creates not a particularly happy or ease filled world, always invited me in, like I was being asked to join the dance, be a participant in the dream and to connect and share and live and hope and cry and matter in this world.
During the post-show discussion, though not revealing overly much about his process, Arias reveals that the content of the work sprang forth almost entirely from everyone building trust and just being emotionally present in the room. As this temporary community shares stories about where they are at come the threads that will be woven. Not an unusual process these days but clearly something powerful happens when art is made this way and when the receiver of this work has prepared themselves for it in a similar manner. I find myself grateful that my insurance has helped support years in my therapist’s office. Turns out, being more psychically regulated makes watching dance a lot more fun.
Approximately 35 minutes in length and over much too quickly, the work opens with a tense juxtaposition — a performer in a mysterious but magical blue mask stands upstage right, a group of four dancers caught in a moment of stillness under a hazy spotlight. The dancers suspend time for a moment, looking as though they are caught in the midst of a sad though ecstatic dance at a funeral perhaps. Lights fade. We see something similar when the lights come back up and the dance begins to come to life. Opening in mostly unison phrasing that contains fragments of various forms, perhaps a few Afro-Caribbean steps interwoven with gestures from life’s more trying moments, the dancers are immediately powerful yet a bit introspective, dancing together and very alone all at once. There is a sort of heat exhaustion permeating the work, as the dancers progress, their loosely fitting beautifully curated Caribbean casual shirts and pants feel made for the sweat and turmoil that twirls and tumbles forth. Intricate and borderline dangerous group partnering appears and reappears throughout the work, a small but powerful community always at the ready to catch someone who has lost it all, to bring them back into the fold, saying with the softness of a momentary hug “don’t worry, we got you.”
Eventually we get to a series of solos, Lani Yamanaka, Emily Hansel, Nicholas Korkos, Isaac Bates-Vinueza and Chris Bloom are unique and riveting to watch. The solos further emphasize deeply embodied and richly layered though ultimately unnamable emotional histories all expressed through movement so complex as to appear to be only possible as improvisation. Whether it is made up on the spot or not is probably less important than the sense that we are watching life happening, not a recording, not a simulacrum but present, real-time human beings in the act of being. Obviously this is not actual life, it is all an abstraction, but the essence of lives lived fully with pain, pleasure, love, loss, sweetness, death…it is all there.
As the work comes about two thirds of the way through its journey, masks reappear. Now being worn by most of the performers, the masks deepen the mysteries of this dream. They are not terrorizing — though to my senses, like most masks I suppose, they invite an existential dissonance that feels like we are now in a magical waiting room between life and death, not quite one or the other. The masks also necessitate a moment of slowing down. The composition has perhaps needed this, could see it coming, after so much complexity, a chance to simplify and find the richness in minimal moments. There is some unexpected beauty here, for a while, several performers become ghostly silhouettes behind the rear scrim balancing a tender dance downstage. I admit, my memory of the dance after this has grown weaker the further I get from the theater and closer to my keyboard but I recall thinking that there was also some interesting repurposing of earlier materials…classic recapitulation with variation. The composition teacher within me was tickled by just how many boxes this work ticked off successfully.
Also, among its many positive charms, the piece has a rich sense of musicality. Live recordings of Jose Feliciano and other Puerto Rican musical artists come and go, filtered and unfiltered, complete and in fragments, all which frame the work as an experience that is sometimes in a state of remembrance, sometimes fully present and sometimes expressing an absence, music carving out a mysterious location in the middle of an island nation in the middle of the night.
The work as we learn from program notes is something of a meditation on Arias’ connection to Puerto Rico. That side of it is powerfully felt even for someone like me that knows pathetically little about the place, its people and its culture. To say that I feel it or understand it is probably a testament to the power of well-made art. I can’t help but wonder if there isn’t something that happens when I am in the presence of something that invites me in, opens up a channel of some sort and speaks to me…that suddenly nothing is foreign, it is all human, that there are extraordinary things that while tied to culture are still somehow also, I’m scared to say it, universal? Clearly one needs to be careful saying such things, especially as a middling member of the wrong side of a power dynamic that has often done the people of this nation many deep injustices. But there is something powerful and hopeful there too. That for brief moments as witnesses to good art we commune across differences and in those moments deepen empathy and understanding not just for others but for ourselves as well. Was not expecting this as my takeaway from a contemporary dance presented by a repertory company. Mind officially blown. I can’t wait to see what this company does next.
*Most of you reading this have probably seen this infamous video but if you haven’t: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQyALIEydbc
Sheldon Smith has been a full-time adjunct at Mills College since 2008. Originally from Omaha, Nebraska, he discovered a love of experimentalism and electronic music while becoming the first-ever dance major at Colorado College. He went on to receive an MFA in dance at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where he wrote a thesis, prior to the internet era, speculating on an emerging form of dance that might radically innovate through swiftly evolving technologies.
