Dance review
Dancers provide powerful 'Passage'
By Ana Paula Höfling
Visual arts and dance merged seamlessly Friday night at The Arts at Mark's Garage, a gallery/performance space which proved ideal for "Passage into Tomorrow," a "living art installation" presented by Iona Pear Dance Theatre.
A woman buried in a pile of burnt wood greets the audience in a committed stillness, her unblinking eyes wide open, her tense hands resembling claws. A wooden crate filled with paper upon close inspection reveals a breathing body, folded tightly. A man surrounded by shards of a broken mirror observes a mobile of metallic paper airplanes, hanging closely overhead. An overcoat, suspended by nylon strings, encases a man who stands up to his ankles in red paint.
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"Passage Into Tomorrow" The ARTS at Marks Garage 8 p.m. today $15 521-2903
Another performer hangs from the ceiling in a plastic bag, his breath rhythmically inflating and deflating his transparent cocoon. In the corner, a black plastic tarp covers up another body. A woman, dressed in newspaper clippings about the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, crouches on a pedestal, absolutely immobile.
In the most poignant image of the evening, Summer Partlon's braids and torn red dress are suspended by barely visible nylon strings, her hands thrown up in the air and her mouth open, as if responding to the "mighty air blows" announced on the newspaper-clipping woman's upper arm.
At first, everyone is still — only the audience moves around the performers. The lack of motion and the commitment of the performers to their stillness was so powerful that, when the music changed and the movement slowly began, I wished I could keep them motionless for a few more minutes.
But the movement only adds to the performance, as we watch the human sculptures transform, as each one of them leaves their shells.
The woman covered in news headlines deliberately tears them off her body one by one, until only one word is left on her forehead: WAR. The performer in the red dress melts out of it, leaving it behind like a silent witness to the aftermath of war. The man in the overcoat steps out of both the overcoat and the bucket of red paint and slowly walks away, leaving his bloody footprints behind for the others to follow. When all the performers exit, all that is left are the metaphorical skins of the performers — a suspended red dress, a plastic bag, news clippings scattered on the floor.
Director Cheryl Flahaty, with the help of her talented performers, attains a disturbing beauty in this work, often characteristic of Butoh. In such an intimate setting, where little separates the audience from the performers, the sadness, pain, and despair experienced sneaks under the skin of those in the audience, too.
Ana Paula Höfling is a dancer, dance teacher and choreographer, pursuing her MFA at UH Manoa.
