The Boston Center for the Arts, Boston, MA.
May 11, 2025.
Dancers circled round an intimate stage area, going through the viewers, and provided intricate gestures: accents clear but high quality mushy. These gestures quickened and grew extra complicated, but fluidity nonetheless prevailed. They wore pristine white formed in edgy, and individualized, cuts.
These gestures got here to attach ensemble members, a forearm transferring tenderness to a different dancer – which that dancer prolonged to a different dancer, catalyzing a wave of connection. The rating – from Big Thief, as all through the work – grew to become extra muscular and energetic.
Movement did in flip, extending each tight precision and straightforward indulgence. Relationships between ensemble members continued to construct by that motion. Tenderness, tenacity, relationship, musicality: all these components had been clear proper from this opening to Cassie Wang’s The Head Is Not The Star of the Body, and poignant all through the complete work.
Wang and collaborators created and introduced the work by a Boston Dancemakers Residency, by way of the Boston Center for the Arts. The program is an “incubator”, as Director of Dance and Interdisciplinary Arts Andrea Blesso described it: for contemporary, modern work from sturdy native dancemakers. Ilya Vidrin served as Dramaturg, and Dara Nicole Capley as Rehearsal Director.
The Head Is Not the Star of the Body held a mirror to massive concepts similar to nostalgia and interpersonal turbulence. Beautiful motion, abstraction leaving room for private that means, and a typically calming environment made the view from that mirror each accessible and satisfying.
Nostalgia got here by interweaving motion reflecting “air guitar”, playground enjoyable (from line video games similar to “Red Rover” to clapping sequences a la “Miss Mary Mack” to parachute play from bodily schooling class), and residential video from Wang’s childhood (video enhancing by Wang and Kiki Temple).
A way of delicate care translated by acts of witnessing, ensemble members watching two others dance a duet. Actions such again scratching, hair braiding, and mushy hugs spoke to care. At occasions, some dancers even actually carried others: taking all of their weight in order that, for a time, they didn’t have to carry all of it themselves.
Yet, duets additionally mirrored stress and battle between two personas, angles and accent sharp. I contemplated how the nostalgia and interpersonal stress on the stage’s transferring canvas is perhaps related; reminiscence could be sweetest when shared, however those that lived it don’t all the time see it the identical.
Staging and motion vocabulary did a lot of the heavy lifting for conveying these concepts: calling upon each the extremely pedestrian and notably virtuosic. Simple touches and weight sharing got here together with complicated floor-based vocabulary and precisely-timed acrobatics (similar to handstands).
Physicality of motion and of presence tangoed, giving and taking. At factors, waltz, groove, and jazzy articulations expanded stylistic vary – in addition to introduced extra ease and lightness to the ether. All of that successfully contributed to the image on that transferring canvas, nothing prevailing over the rest.
The Big Thief tracks additionally set an apt aural environment for these themes and qualities. The ensemble exhibited stellar musicality – attunement to one another’s timing and the rating exacting, but mushy. It didn’t grasp, solely landed in that snug “pocket” of timing.
Wang structured all of this into little dance vignettes, conveying diverse relationships and energies. Part of me craved extra ensemble sections within the first half of the work – which was principally targeted on duets between two central personas danced by Wang and Hannah Franz. The two introduced affecting theatricality, extremely eager kinetic attunement, and plain technical command: all charming to look at.
Yet, I discovered myself craving a bit extra structural steadiness in favor of extra ensemble vitality, their filling the stage with frequent motion made extremely private and trustworthy – all of them attractive movers and theatrically entrancing. I felt extra referred to as to, extra emotionally invested in, their story of neighborhood versus simply two in relation.
Blesso had talked about that that is “just the beginning” for the work. For additional iterations, such structural evening-out of ensemble and duet sections is the primary factor I’d like to see re-molded, re-shaped.
I do perceive an intention of eager to middle a sure relationship, with folks coming out and in of our interactions – as they do in our lives. A framing of their story could be very a lot official, solely much less interesting to my coronary heart and soul than the ensemble’s story.
I additionally level to potential enhancing down; I would problem Wang, in a spirit of artistic exploration and curiosity, to think about what sections won’t be contributing extra to the surprise and poignancy that she’s already established. Less could be extra. That mentioned, commendably, all sections and selections – in and of themselves – felt ingenious somewhat than repetitive.
The pensive environment, rising from all of that, softened a bit in direction of the top. An energetic crescendo had the ensemble clapping and singing whereas additionally dancing, going through the viewers in vivacious, expansive ensemble motion.
Lights within the area turning off one after the other, dancers sung collectively below a non-public fort created from a sheet (repurposed from serving for video projection) – recreating childhood sleepovers. The threads of nostalgia and interpersonal connection continued by to this mushy, heartwarming finish.
I hope it’s certainly not the final finish for this work; I’d like to see Wang refine and construct upon it. Movement enthralling, rating an ideal accompaniment, and themes deeply resonant, there’s a lot right here that I hope extra folks can encounter.
The Head is Not The Star of The Body stands as a reminder of what artists can accomplish by helps just like the Boston Dancemakers Residency, introduced along with their uncooked grit and expertise. Just because the title affords a timeless reality (granted, if one many in our tradition aren’t conditioned to know), it might actually be solely the start. I joyfully anticipate extra of the story advised.
By Kathryn Boland of Dance Informa.
