HQ Review: Space Station Dance Residency 2024
“I’ve heard of its beauty, and in some ways… it’s bizarreness too. Um and I felt it… And I felt it.”
These words, spoken by Marlee Doniff in their solo work “I Drove Through West Virginia in the Dead of Night,” capture perfectly the essence of the performance series at which they were uttered. Space Station Dance Residency, co-directed by Jacob Henss and Robbie Van Nest, truly is no stranger to the bizarre and the beautiful. Now in its 5th year, Space Station serves as an incubator for St. Louis artists to probe at their most experimental ideas, a gamble that has routinely laid host to some of the most unexpected and thought-provoking works of dance theatre in the St. Louis area.
Often hosted in intimate settings, this year’s residency is held in the chapel of Hope United Church of Christ. A couple panels of marley lay taped to a carpeted floor with audiences seated in a single row stretching along all four walls. This unconventionality and intimacy generates an almost immediate feeling of community, all central to the ethos of Space Station.
The first work of the night, “Holy Body / Monstrous Body” by Melissa Miller, opens abruptly with a woman, Sarah Yvonne, spinning, piqueing, and skating through the chapel. A weighty impatience clashes against movements that would otherwise seem jovial and impish. Another dancer sits at a table laid just off center, hesitantly chewing grapes and spitting them back out onto the draping white tablecloth. The soloist writhes and collapses in anguish as the remaining grapes are eventually crushed and mangled by the other’s hands. After a long, reflective stillness amidst the hollow sounds of church bells, the soloist begins desperately devouring the chewed up remains of the grapes. Sarah’s performance is meaty, raw, and monstrous, hauntingly balanced against a delicate virtuosity, and anchored by Melissa’s stoic, statuesque presence through the work. In stride with its title, the piece tangles and contrasts an almost baroque beauty with a Goya-esque grotesqueness. There is a heavy grit permeating through every pore of the work, alongside hefty loads of Christian iconography that shine light on the darker, far-from-cleanly corners of religious traditions.
A massive tonal shift awaits with the occasionally kitschy, certainly whimsical, and thoroughly western “Rollin’” by Paige Van Nest. A grid of four dancers clad in cowboy attire smile cheekily through a series of primarily unison, full-bodied gestures set to the cinematic sounds of an old timey radio show. Occasional stunts and bouts of percussive physicality begin to pepper their way through the work as the dancers begin to explore their own narratives and identities outside of the group. The work toys heavily with playful theatricality and a cartoonish minimalism, akin to a 1960s mod aesthetic. There is a notable strangeness to the way time and space move. At certain points the dancers duel in a tumbleweed-ridden desert, or party to Beyonce’s “Countdown,” red solo cups in hand. From playing red-light green-light beside a desert plateau to Texas hold ‘em at a bar, the games played through the work hint at a constant aging that is marked by its connection to our youth. More specifically, perhaps, the work hints at the ways we continue to be captivated by the Wild West, from the games our grandparents played as kids to the songs we now sing in bars.
Following those Americana themes and brimming with tokens of wisdom and whimsical musings, “I Drove Through West Virginia in the Dead of Night” feels like a pitstop on the road trip from a coming-of-age fever dream. Barging into the room, and unwrapping a bag of Taco Bell, Marlee Doniff stumbles and whirls through a reassuring mantra: “I’ve done this before.” The movement is friendly, quirky and familiar, yet, at all times, entirely unexpected. Often off-kilter and with a sense of curiosity, the artist drifts around the space while speaking in conversation with themself about the beauty and wonder along the West Virginian motorways. Putting on their tennis shoes, the artist rambles of toll booths and trolls, before landing on the sage line “What am I willing to pay to get past this?” Jumping on an exercise bike and uniting the audience through a karaoke set of John Denver’s “Country Roads,” Marlee leaves a lingering sense of gratitude for even the most effortful and potentially awkward parts of life - the parts we wish to get past the most may become the most memorable pitstops on our own life journeys.
Set to the cool jazz of the Ahmad Jamal Trio, the fourth piece of the night, “Forced Perspectives” by Erin Morris, offers an oasis in its corporeality. Morris begins folded, her arms undulating and rippling hypnotically along the floor. Her movement eddies through every joint of her body as she ascends, a constant wave swimming through each bone. Moments of vernacular jazz begin to peek out through the haze of pulsating limbs, connecting to the groove of the music through an impressively stylized approach. The lights fade on Morris’s eyes fully locked in on a fixed point near an edge of the performance space, her arms still undulating like jellyfish. Any narrative one could attempt to place on this work feels extraneous against its pure mechanical wonder.
The night culminates with “Turning Point” by Louisiana based choreographer Ty Lewis, a work yet again oozing with tension and weight. The piece opens with ten dancers running in place, moving faster and faster without ever travelling to surpass one another. The dancers abruptly split off, some sitting along the sidelines while others engage in short gestural movement phrases on their own. Words like “around” and “watch out” are shouted out like in sports practice, a reference made clearer by the intermittent team breaks to stretch and cool down before cycling through the groups again and again. Despite having the largest cast of the night, the dancers feel isolated. They move entirely on their own, never smiling, hardly looking at each other. The choreographer shouts numbers, “3, 5, 7, 7…” at the dancers, clapping at them as they dance faster and harder, a palpable frustration buzzes through the room until, finally, the dancers snap. United emotionally and physically by a common strain, the dancers move as one organism, streaming and oozing along each other, carrying one another through the space. Movements that once felt like aimless gestures are now delivered with purpose and power. Where a hollow agitation once resided now exists an empowered community, breathing as one, sharing sweat, supporting each other in body and soul. After the lights have faded, the dancers bow first to each other before acknowledging the audience. And it is precisely this, the joyful support of artists first, that reminds us the value of Space Station as a sanctuary for the art of dance in St Louis.
Photos by Carly Vanderheyden