The final Fringe Festival performance of “Merged II” was presented on Wednesday night at Geva’sNextstage. This deeply moving and visually stunning series
of performances was a fantastic celebration of the human body’s capabilities to
strive and express and explore and persevere.
A few of the seven pieces resonated more powerfully with me
than others. A short while into watching “Vent,” I came to think of the whole
piece as an interpretation of our vulnerable and expressive relationship with
breath, and it absolutely expanded for me the definition of dance.
In the piece, choreographer and performer Melanie Aceto moves seamlessly through a variety of humorous or
downright scary-to-witness manifestations of breath, the only sound her breath
and footfall. Aceto takes a huge cleansing exhale
paired with slow, arching movements; works through an increasing, and
concerning, shortness of breath after jogging in a wide circle; performs a
whole-body strain of a coughing fit after a temporary relief of breathy chuckles.
Ambient music, at times unsettling and dissonant, (by James
Hansen, who is also the choreographer for the work) is the backdrop for “Clash,”
in which two dancers (Lynea D’Aprix
and Sean Keil) navigate one another while evidently
also focusing inward on private pain. Through this very resonant piece, the duo
seize up, twirl, and move haltingly around one another, alternating between
gentle embraces, supporting one another’s semi-limp forms, or shoving one
another away with a sudden snap of a limb. The dancers regarded one another
with gently devastated or devastatingly gentle expressions, reaching for each
other as often as they try to get away.
Immediately following this fairly heavy piece was Heather Roffe’s “Coloring Outside…,” an empowering soliloquy of self,
set to the lovely sounds of Bernhard Fleischmann’s “Composure.” It was an
absolute fascinating delight to watch Roffe’s strong,
graceful form slowly explore the negative space around a single cube prop,
holding perfect plane and angular poses on or around it and gradually gaining
more and more ground away from it.
I was moved nearly to tears by “Ophelia’s Reclamation,” which
was choreographed by James Hansen and featured three dancers (Stevie Oakes,
Heather Roffe, and Vanessa Van Wormer). The work
begins with two dancers lying prone at the back of the stage. Up front, “Ophelia”
performs a sensual and longing solo dance to Jeff Buckley’s “Lilac Wine.”
Her call is unanswered, and as the story goes, she lays her
body down, but as she does so, the two in the back stir and roll forward to
meet her body. All arms and legs rise and fall like waves crashing to the sound
of tides and heartbeats, bringing to mind sirens playing in the surf. As they
rise together, Buckley’s “Hallelujah” begins to play, and they move about the
stage like the Three Graces, a work of art in motion, providing a beautiful
interpretation and accompaniment to the aching and wise melody.
This article appears in Sep 24-30, 2014.
