HQ Review: Karlovsky and Company Dance’s “In Transit”
InTransit, a community project led by Karlovsky & Company Dance, began during the pandemic and has endured beyond those strict restrictions. In this year's iteration, audience members moved between five locations: four small, brief performances culminating in a finale at a fifth location. Audiences were invited to chose their own starting location: Tree Grove at the Pulitzer, Park-Like, Spring Church, or The Sheldon.
I began at Tree Grove. Upon arriving I followed a group of dancers dressed in white running across the street to an open gravel courtyard interspersed with slender trees. On the far end of the space, a saxophone player warmed up his instrument and a circle of six dancers jumped up and down, jostling to stay warm. In the meantime, a dozen of us waited in a staggered line for the show to begin. Eventually the dancers put their arms around one another for a final pre-show huddle, then spread into a line along an ivy-covered stone wall, their backs to us. The saxophone began a slow ambling tune and the dancers came to life, stretching away from the wall and then retracting back into form. In a brief moment of unison, dancers lifted their chests to the sky, heads dropping behind them then curved forward again before suddenly scattering, each racing to a different tree to peek out at us before scampering to another. As the movement progressed, dancers came together and apart, swung on branches, hoisted one another up into limbs or ran back to the wall to climb. The effect of this relatively brief piece was delightful: the music and the dancers were playful, exuberant: at ease with one another and us.
The guides led us next to The Sheldon. Dancers in blue were seated on a long built-in concrete bench as we arrived, some smiling at us in welcome, others chatting quietly to one another and to the accordion player. They waited for us to settle, then a dancer sitting on one edge looked down the line of seven dancers and said, “Ok, friends,” and the music began. In straight lines moving towards us half of the dancers came forward and then back to their seats. Thesecondhalfrepeatedthepathway. Themusicwasslowandambient,longnotesheldoutas the dancers repeated the pattern, half coming forward then back to their seats where they casually watched their cohort do the same. The cadence of the dancers' movements, the swelling and fading music, and the blue costumes against the red brick building brought to mind a teeming body of water pushing up against a human-made edge. Suddenly the music picked up speed, and the dancers walked forward then abandoned order all together, creating their own sporadic paths across the space. They seemed to each be playing a different game, or one which no one knew the rules to: some shuffling side to side, others crawling, jumping, following, standing, or leading. Theresultwasamomentofplayfulchaoswithperformerssmiling,laughing,andbeing generally delighted to be getting in one another's way. Next was a series of solos; the movements were fluid and individualized, suggesting improvisation. As the music faded the dancers melted into odd, angular shapes like fallen dolls neglected after play.
Park Like was next: a patch of green space brimming with pale native plants and muted flowers. In this location the dancers were not immediately visible but walked out together in straight lines dressed in pink: striking a formal tone. Two percussionists began a steady tinkering beat recalling the inner workings of a bell tower. Standing (by design or happy accident) in a patch of orange sunlight on the ascending path ahead of us, the performers, a group of women spanning generations, moved in unison. Gesturing wide and slow, their arms created strong lines
on the horizon; faces illuminated. The movement rang of the sacred: the women as sylphs or enchantresses venerating the earth and time. The percussion picked up speed and the dancers broke apart into new patterns, groups of two and three interacting with one another in circles in and out of the hill. Again the same playful ease emanated from these performers. As the percussion petered out (like the sound of a clock needing a wind) the dancers retreated behind the hill in a single line, returning for a final bow.
Then we found ourselves at Spring Church, which was partially destroyed by a fire in 2001 and has been reimagined as public space. From where we stood we could see that the stone facade is without a ceiling and that green vines have taken residence inside. The wall facing us had empty arched enclaves in which the performers were perched, dressed in orange. One came from an empty doorway to stand between us and the building. The violinist, perched atop what was once a windowsill, played a low, vibrating tune occasionally scratching to silence and beginning again as the dancers moved inside the frames, making their way onto the pavilion below. The movements were careful, undulating, and introspective - each dancer seemed lost inside themselves. They found a beat of stillness then moved in unison, arms pushing and pulling their torsos side to side, feet firmly placed, before jumping straight up, torsos and heads curved down. The moment of welcome unison broke apart and dancers created trios, duets, or spiraling solos before finding themselves repeating the unison phrase to break away a second time. The pattern repeats as the music increases in urgency. There is interaction between dancers but no playfulness or levity. Instead is a sense of deep resonating or of ancient ritual. The piece ends with two dancers having made their way into empty window frames above us while the remaining four find a cascading position in the grass, each resting an arm or a head onto the body below.
For the finale we were joined by a sizable audience and all performers gathered outside the Grandel Theater on an ascending row of platforms. This portion was exuberant, occasionally chaotic, peppered with moments of satisfying unison: a vibrant cacophony of music, color, and movement doused in play. After final bows a brief dance party ensued, audience members jumping into the moment.
The work brought to mind questions of audience-performer relationship. Site-specific performance is not only about how dancers navigate unconventional spaces or how they can inspire choreography. It is also a question of what it does to an audience. How is the audience experiencing and seeing dance differently, closer and more human, than they have been allowed before? How are we offering a new agency? This was of great importance to the pioneering performers who first took their art into public spaces, questioning how each of us, audience member and performer, adapts and reacts to one another. At its best, site specific dance is a move towards a democratization of performance. It is a practice of aliveness, a rejection of austerity and elitism, and has latent potential for chaos, connection, and transcendence. In this, Karlovsky & Company Dance did not disappoint.
