The ensemble transforms right into a mountain. Dancer Sara Caplan is the mountain climber. She stoically travels this human path ascending and descending gracefully. The many peaks and valleys shaped by the connecting our bodies of the opposite dancers showcases their talent and quickness as they repeatedly assemble and reassemble the mountain vary. They supply their backs, shoulders, arms and thighs as Caplan rises to the heavens and walks her option to discovering the ground earlier than climbing as soon as extra. This mountain vary strikes via the house at a really gradual tempo. The construction builds itself again and again with nice care. The ensemble deftly combines their our bodies to create steps and handrails for Sara to make use of as she walks this dwelling path. The highest peak brings her shut sufficient to the lofted ceiling of Yaw theater to increase an arm and maybe tickle a ceiling beam. This part of Girl in Late August produced by the Coriolis PostBallet Dance Collective and choreographed by Madeleine Gregor is a robust testomony to the deep listening and robust connectivity of this ensemble of artists.
This full size dance is made up of a number of motion vignettes peppered with solos that includes every solid member all through. Everyone is on stage nearly the entire time. While solos occur the remainder of the ensemble stays concerned in group actions like gradual embraces and consuming strawberries, creating a visible cacophony of a backdrop for the principle motion. Vases filled with wheat create a nostalgic ambiance that’s redoubled by the solid’s floral print attire. A confrontational stripping reveals quite a lot of white underwear evoking a retro nation aesthetic specific to this group of cis gendered girls dancers. A plethora of pop music from the Nineties and 2000s serves a tender drag like sensibility all through the piece. These moments felt steeped in cliches of what a “good girl” needs to be and what she ought to do to insurgent in opposition to oppressive magnificence requirements and methods of connecting with different cis gendered girls. The mixture of a giant group of ladies in floral print attire dancing defiantly to an Alanis Morissette track a few break up delivers up to date dance angst galore. Certain motion phrases pop up repeatedly all through the dance: facet leg extensions with pointed then flexed toes, flailing port a bras with hearts open, arms typically greedy their faces and mouths, highly effective angle turns and complicated partnering and lifts (dancer Nicole Cardona was a standout within the partnering moments showcasing their nice energy and fluidity.) It seems like a lyrical coming of age dance story for a bunch of cis girls from a midwestern state working via their points with conformity—combating for independence by dancing collectively and processing masculine fetishization behind closed doorways.
Moments of poetry written and recited by Gregor pop up all through. In her poetry I hear a need for rebel in opposition to cliches of magnificence and womanhood and a questioning of what it means for a cis lady to succeed in and move her “prime.” The group performs with constructions and actions that I really feel are a mix of set and improvised work. The choreographer appears to be questioning cliches about magnificence and womanhood inside the particular person and collective shifting physique. Moving collectively it’s simpler to precise a variety of emotion, it’s safer to make bizarre and ugly faces, it’s simpler to confront the gaze of the viewers. The dancers try to maneuver like wild flowers and wild animals. They dance emotionally to favourite pop and nation songs and resist the domestication their specific expertise appears to demand.
Dressed within the floral prints that recall the Nineties, the ensemble seems to be like a David Lynchian Midwestern femme military. I think about they’re about to go decide flowers, make iced tea, and discuss their man issues. In one part the motion turns into fully gestural and targeted within the arms and faces of the dancers. They start circling one dancer. Everyone is laughing. But one thing sinister emerges. It turns into unclear if they’re laughing at or with the dancer they’re surrounding. Then the laughter turns to grimacing, faces of judgment or disgust. They circle the singled-out dancer, greedy their heads, snarling. It turns into clear this can be a dance of mirroring because the singled-out dancer continues to attempt to conform to the group. The scene within the horror film Midsommar involves thoughts when a bunch of femmes is surrounding the lead character, copying her sounds and her sobbing en masse, driving her to an emotional breakdown. Is mirroring an efficient option to perceive the nuance of somebody’s embodied expertise? This part didn’t reply this for me however had me questioning the connection between conformity, empathy, and mockery. I considered the cultish nature of gender efficiency for youngsters as they uncover the best way they need to current on the earth by mimicking celebrities and attempting on personas in personal home areas…a take a look at for the numerous methods they could have interaction with their gender presentation in weak public areas.
This dance showcases Gregor’s poetic experiences of girlhood whereas inviting within the particular person kinds of the opposite dancers. Throughout this work I see the celebration of the sensations and realizations that embodiment practices can elicit when a bunch of dancers decides to discover their private expertise of gender collectively within a secure container held by the choreographer’s imaginative and prescient. In Gregor’s motion specifically I see an ecstatic rebel in opposition to conservative conformity. In her fast and highly effective actions, wildly free joints and gymnastic-like leaps I hear an thrilling invitation for all people to strive being wild and free. In her dancing I hear a name to buck expectations of what “good girls” ought to sound and transfer like. Her ardour to see her concepts play out with a collective of dancers including their very own taste jogs my memory of how dance generally is a doorway to liberation from typical expectations.
An unsettling feeling stays with me though this piece resists conformity. They all put on comparable garments, they’re all cis-gendered, all of them dance via the identical motion phrases though peppered with varied different constructions. This work stays within the territory of the newly liberated teenager and doesn’t take us to the mature territory of radical self acceptance and neighborhood interconnectedness. It stays targeted on questioning conformity and constructions of cis-gendered collectivity. It is as if the dancers are skillfully feeling on the edges of their embodiment cages however not fairly breaking free. Perhaps that is the primary chapbook of dance poetry concerning this imaginative and prescient from Gregor and the second quantity of this dance will proceed the journey. I sit up for seeing how Gregor and collaborators proceed their strategy of questioning cis-gendered expectations and shifting in direction of self discovery via dance.
Girl In Late August ran Dec 1-2 2023 at Yaw Theater. More on Coriolis Dance and Girl in Late August on their web site.