WITNESS TRANSFORMS | SeattleDances

As the viewers enters the theater and finds their seats, seven dancers in grey and black avenue garments transfer on and round folding chairs scattered throughout the stage. We appear to be mirroring one another. The dancers maintain arms, pull one another off the ground, and embrace, making a human interconnectedness. The title of this system is Witness—making me take into consideration what that phrase calls for and what awaits me as witness to the hour-long, nonstop efficiency by Marlo Martin’s bamarmarDANCE firm.

Photo by Joseph Lambert/Jazzy Photo

When the home lights dim, the dancers (Ally Elliott, Nicole Cardona, Miranda Chantelois, Hayley Keller, Sean O’Bryan, Tyra Rose, Bri Wilson) forcefully transfer the chairs right into a circle. All stay seated apart from one, who paces across the circle assessing and difficult the others. The central dancer is sort of a conductor who, with a motion of her arm, causes the others to fall into and drape over the chairs. The music booms and my coronary heart hammers. The dancers commerce off the dominant position, the dynamics of management hinting that all of us include a lust for energy. At one level, a dancer alights on an remoted chair like assuming a throne. When O’Bryan places a choke maintain on Rose, she actually laps up the sado-masochistic kink as she thrusts her tongue out, licking in a concurrently seductive and grotesque method. I’m reminded of the banality of violence in all of us. This is considered one of many instances the place witnessing forces the viewers to show inward and embrace our unconscious enjoyment of all features of our shadow selves. 

Throughout the work, the dancers make and maintain eye contact with the viewers difficult us to not shrink from the discomfort. Instead they provide us a mirror to look into the multi-facets of our human expertise. The dancers continually transfer the chairs, altering our perspective and the window by which we view them. The tour of our psyche continues as O’Bryan laughs insanely and factors on the viewers indicating we too may very well be loopy. A voice over of the music asks, Where does it harm? Do you need it to cease? Hurts in all places. What occurred? I didn’t hear. Couldn’t let go. Needed extra. I couldn’t transfer. Haunting questions that spotlight each how tough it may be to know the supply of our issues and that self-sabotage could also be on the root. 

Tyra Rose and Sean O’Brian. Photo by Joseph Lambert/Jazzy Photo.

The athletic choreography strikes from shoulder stands on the chairs to pogo stick jumps and we hear the dancers’ animalistic respiratory. They mass collectively amoeba-like and separate into featured solos and duos. They whisper counts sounding just like the gentle scratching of bugs. Their hair flies with every head toss, a visible of reckless abandon and freedom. Massing collectively and at turns lifting one another, their literal help of each other exhibiting a belief—their group is there for them.  

The arc of the piece is sort of a storm—turbulent power that builds to a crescendo. At the peak, two dancers, Chantelois and Wilson, appear to hover on the sting of a cliff, arms blowing again behind them. I maintain my breath as they droop in hinged positions, creating a visible metaphor–would they plunge into a brand new course, or maintain onto what they know.

Photo by Joseph Lambert/Jazzy Photo

 Suddenly, like a break within the clouds, blinding gentle bars illuminate alongside the ground. The temper shifts. The dancers explode, leaping off the chairs in pleasure, absolutely alive. It’s like they’ve built-in every thing that got here earlier than–ache, grief, violence, flirtation–with pleasure and goal and transfer by their world with complete confidence. Indeed all of the dancers are attractive movers who let their individuality shine whereas transferring collectively in lovely synchronicity. One picture captures the concept of getting out of your individual method to obtain success: one dancer runs by the others who’ve fashioned a single file line, waving them simply apart.

At the very finish, the dancers line up the chairs and rush by them towards the viewers indicating it’s our flip to look at and love the vary of our feelings and needs. Accepting the nice, the dangerous, and the ugly of ourselves with out disgrace permits for the kind of transformative magic Martin and firm create in Witness.

Witness confirmed at NOD Theater October 27-Twenty ninth, 2023.