HQ Review: RESILIENCE’s “Entry Points”

Dancers enter the stage slowly, house lights still up, softly taking the shape of cluttered furniture, discarding belongings in a scrap pile of junk one might find in a broom closet or unfinished basement. As the gentle strumming of the intro music fades into roaring chatter, the stage is prepared with a gentle fervor - a construction ladder is taken off stage right, a dry-mop swept across the floor - before the dancers and the music both climax into a melodic scream, relenting only out of shock of their own volume. This act of preparation serves as an eloquent metaphor for the meticulous groundwork and constant growth that has paved the way for Resilience Dance Company’s explosive entry into its sixth anniversary season. The 2024 edition of Entry Points, Resilience’s annual fall repertory concert, holds absolutely nothing back in its physicality, artistry, and production. Featuring five pieces, by predominantly female choreographers, Entry Points is a thunderous, contemplative, and inspiring journey that digs into and showcases the undoubted range, power, and humanity of Resilience’s eight-person ensemble.

Annie Rigney’s “Just” is a profound meditation on baggage, attachment, and humanity. Dressed in simple, retro pastels, the dancers move through the space with honesty - thudding, quaking, throwing, or just sorting laundry with an authenticity rarely found across the proscenium. Rigney showcases a mastery of composition, toying with the volume of space, time, and energy to the point of transcendence. Movement and narrative breathe their way into every corner of the space. It is impossible to grasp onto everyone’s journey, leaving a sense of being washed over by the kaleidoscope of interactions. As a dancer pushes a pile of trash across the stage, others fall full-force into each other or into the floor underneath them, while others still build into a chorus of unfeigned gestures. A standout duet between Abbi LeBaube and Josiah Gundersen questions the idea of attachment to people as objects as the two grapple each other's limbs, throw each other aside, and soften into the space of the other’s body. Like tendrils reaching towards the sun, the dancers end by seeping up the giant structure of hoarded belongings, clinging to and taking the shape of the mounds of the very objects that cling to them.

The second work of the night, “Encantados” by Victoria Lynn Awkward, is a joyous whirlwind of jazzy flutes, thrown pelvises, and wispy limbs. Set to Amaro Freitas’ Brazilian jazz score of the same name, “Encantados” plays heavily into the music, attempting to transcribe the sounds in real time into physical space. Classic modern dance tilts and jumps capture the speed and attack of the piano and bass, while lighthearted skitters across the stage pay homage to the scattered notes of Shabaka Hutchings’ flute playing. A returning choreographer to Resilience, Awkward’s newest work continues where her previous piece, “Soft Fire,” left off in its exhaustive, party-like atmosphere and abstract physicality. 

Where “Encantados” brings flighty revelry, Kia Smith’s “My Island Highway” follows with grounded, athletic whimsy. Smith’s work strips down Baroque tastes to varying levels of undress both in the costuming and in structure. The dancers condense in on center stage, stacked and poised for a portrait, moving their arms through fast, tight, synchronized gestures. Their faces crinkle into silent screeches and their arms flap vigorously like the wings of a seagull on the attack. “My Island Highway” showcases an intensity in its intricacy and a theatrical melodrama within its sparse yet ornate stage images. Amidst the surrealism, there is a clear play on power dynamics, as dancers throw themselves upon another as they crawl across the stage, or manipulate one another through various revolving orientations. The piece ends rather abruptly on a contemplative solo by Chrissy Clair, leaving the audience yearning for even more of Smith’s winding, assertive phrasework.

Making its return after its debut in 2023’s Entry Points, Rosanna Tavarez’s “deluge” is an icey oasis that feels somehow peaceful in its avalanching feats of athleticism. The dancers spill across the stage quickly in a tight, ever-evolving clump before spitting each other out into wistful and never ending rides of momentum. The dancers fly, fall, and fling themselves around endlessly, tossing their hair and their limbs in chaotic, outward spirals. Occasional moments of intense shivering, languid collapses, and earnest dragging of fallen bodies hint at an underlying layer of concern and decay. Rigid lines fall and chip off like the calving of a glacier, surging into rapid fits of motion. The urgency is palpable, yet there is an inevitability beneath it all that feels eerily calming - like a beautifully destructive force of nature.

As if the dancers have not yet borne out enough of their souls and physical prowess, Entry Points wrings out every last drop with a sweaty, pounding, unwavering tour-de-force in VIM VIGOR’s “KAIROS.” The final re-opening of the curtain reveals a blinding light from far beyond the now-lifted wings of COCA’s Catherine B. Berges Theater. One dancer wanders out, groping blindly through the unwavering glow, before connecting suddenly in full force with another dancer. From here on, the dancers never settle. Dressed in cool shades of gray and surrounded by the bare architecture of the stage, the dancers feel raw and powerful like a brutalist monument. They flip off of, through, and onto one another's bodies, often from daring heights and with an unruly speed. They give their bodies into the floor with an authenticity that is simultaneously soft and percussive as they roll and chug through the space. They stack their pelvises and shoulders in unimaginably complex and daring feats of partnering with an impossibly organic timing. There is no need for theatrics, just a pure obsession with living in the moment.

In every way, Entry Points is an unrelenting scream. A scream of joy, a scream of thirst, and a scream of triumph. For its first mainstage production on an elevated proscenium stage, Resilience delivered an evening of visionary artistry and rigorous physicality that not only parades the immense growth of its own company, but continues the rocketing forward of Saint Louis’s dance scene as a whole. With an entry this roaring, it is thrilling to imagine what volumes these dancers will reach with the remainder of their 2024-2025 season.