Lali Ayguadé Company, hailing from Barcelona, Spain, performed its two-person show, Runa, at Portland State University’s Lincoln Hall November 13 through 15. This show, presented by White Bird Dance, boasts choreography and performance by the company’s artistic director, Ayguadé, along with dance artist Lisard Tranis.

In the program notes, Runa finds abstract framing as “Tales from another world” and “another time“; a place where two people ”investigate rubble, trying to re-imagine, re-feel, what once was, what they once were.”

Reading this description, my eyes hung on the charged word “rubble.” I learned from White Bird’s Executive Director Graham Cole during his curtain speech that I could expect this story to relate to themes of nostalgia and relationship — an interpersonal and psychological “rubble” of sorts, albeit with contemporary geopolitical connotations of war, genocide, and displacement that I found hard to shake.

Runa unfolded as a dramatic rollercoaster of emotional distance in close proximity between characters played by Ayguadé and Tranis. These two presumably represented a romantic couple in the throes of yearning and heartbreak, haunted by their history and expectation.

Their relationship came to life with the help of Scenographer Martina Cabanas, who set the stage full of objects such as an old television that glimmered on and off, a refrigerator, a washtub with rags, and a worn-out couch. These objects appeared in an irregular arch toward the audience, with plenty of room for the dancers to move about centerstage. All set pieces connoted slightly different historical moments in western domestic life, from mid-century to the more recent past.

Lighting Designer Conchita Pans worked within this household architecture to create a dim and occasionally hazy aura surrounding the stage, which intensified the pall of ambivalence and emotional tension between the dancers. The sound design and composition by Miguel Marin combined pensive synth sounds punctuated with other samples, such as that of wind and crackling tones of old technology. This soundscape also included records of music from days gone by, played live onstage by the dancers at various moments.

The work began with Tranis staring into a glowing TV. The lights proceeded to fade off and on, illuminating scenes of domestic life — Ayguadé and Tranis sitting on the couch, Ayguadé probing the dark space with an unshaded lamp — interspersed with moments of dramatic movement.

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When dancing, the two rolled and slid along the floor, ascending and descending with such well-oiled and fast-paced mechanics that I found their choreography a bit hard to absorb and slightly chaotic (and perhaps this was the point!). They sometimes danced in unison, with Ayguadé wearing black pants, a tucked-in slip and a black jacket and Tranis wearing similar brown outwear and a white tank top. Both these classic looks, assembled by the show’s costume designers Ferran Casanova and Cristian Betancurt, could be from any number of decades.

The relationship between Ayguadé and Tranis seemed shaky from the get-go, an undertone that grew to an overtone the moment Tranis lifted Ayguadé and swung her whole body in a tik-tok motion, like a clock pendulum.

To my recollection, Tranis never shared his center of gravity with Ayguadé in any meaningful way during other partnering motifs of the work. Instead, she always leaned on him or surrendered to be lifted by him, despite her obvious strength and capacity to invert this dynamic. I pondered a queer read of this choreographic trend: Perhaps their dysfunction was due to entrenchment in respective roles in this relationship, so much so that they cannot imagine what else might be possible.

This reading grew more pronounced the moment Ayguadé dawned the blouse and its corresponding skirt from a mannequin onstage. As I witnessed Ayguadé in her new ensemble dancing and being dragged about smilingly by Tranis like a disassociated doll, I wondered what the significance of this garment could be. It consisted of an ’80s era blouse with large buttons, a high neck, and oversized shoulders, paired with a knee-length pencil skirt, all sewed in noisy geometric fabric.

In relation to the other tasteful costuming of ambiguous eras, for me, this look harkened to the gendered ideal of a mother figure, with its modest and homely design. Here, my reading of the nostalgic costume and its relevance to this failing relationship leaned Freudian. 

However, their deteriorating relationship found roots in other factors, such as Ayguadé’s marked distance. At one point, Tranis gesticulated frustratedly to a repeated recording of the line “What do you want, the moon?” from the movie It’s a Wonderful Life, an indication of Ayguadé’s apparently waffling desire. Later, she emerges on tiptoes from the refrigerator in a white coat, hovering around as if threatening to leave, before facing the audience and drawing up tears to her eyes in an indirect expression of dissatisfaction.   

Moments of movement felt dated — in the same vein as its costuming, music, and set design — for instance, the motif in which Ayguadé moved Tranis’s head and arm repetitively and forcefully while he rested on the couch. This gestural trope reminds of the work of elder dancemakers Pina Bausch and Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, the latter of whom was an early influence on Ayguadé’s dance career. 

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The show concluded as Ayguadé and Tranis dawned ballroom shoes and enacted an intricately patterned partner dance with flamenco influence — the most enrapturing number of the show, classic and timeless. I read this motif as a last date, a final attempt to salvage their love, or, perhaps, even just a long goodbye. Ayguadé surrendered to many more ghostly lifts by Tranis before departing once and for all, leaving him onstage alone and reaching melancholically toward the audience as darkness fell. 

Runa made its mark through the well-trodden territory of relational disappointment, a choreography of entanglement in domestic space where the dancers serve as both protagonists and antiheroes, undermining themselves and each other til their final separation. Of course, not all performances need to put an optimistic spin on the past or future, and perhaps this one serves its audience as a pointed cautionary tale.