NW Dance Project kicked off its 21st season on October 25 and 26 at downtown Portland’s Newmark Theatre, reviving two earlier works: Casual Act, by Sarah Slipper, which premiered in March 2013; and Yidam, by resident choreographer Ihsan Rustem, which was first presented in March 2015. Both pieces were equally engrossing and provocative, each using interesting and surprising abstract set design to tell its story, but they were completely different in tone and style.
Casual Act draws inspiration from acclaimed British playwright Harold Pinter’s 1978 classic Betrayal—a play loosely based on his long-term affair with BBC reporter Joan Bakewell. At the time, Bakewell was married to Michael Bakewell, Pinter’s friend, and head of plays for the BBC drama department. The play unfolds in reverse chronological order, revealing a seven-year extramarital affair between characters Emma and Jerry, who have concealed their relationship from Robert, Emma’s husband and Jerry’s best friend. The first two scenes take place after the affair has ended, and the final scene ends when the affair begins.
Slipper’s version strips away dialogue, embodying emotions in their rawest form. Her rendition brings the gut-wrenching tale of love, marriage, friendship, and infidelity to life, crafting a dictionary of gestures — a catalog of movements, each tied to a distinct emotion — as if an entirely new language of signs had been invented solely to tell this story.
Danced expertly by NW Dance Project dancers Armando Brydson, Beatriz Garcia Diaz, Ingrid Ferdinand, Alejandra Preciado, and Anthony Milian, Casual Act unfolds within a revolving set designed and constructed by Jon Plueard. The set is formed by three stark white walls that converge at a central point. One wall features a window, another has a door, and the third is solid, creatively defining time, space, and place.
Throughout the work, the dancers engage with the space in familiar and unexpected ways: They walk through the doorway, peering out the window, slip secretly through it, lift each other over the walls, and balance upside down in handstands against the wall, as if crawling backward up its surface. They dance off the platform into partial darkness and push the revolving structure back and forth as if pushing a giant emotional boulder up a hill, imbuing each movement with deep significance. The set simultaneously reveals and conceals, allowing us to see the cheating couple and the damaging effects on the lonely spouses.
It’s a beautiful and dramatic work that ends unexpectedly like a punch in the stomach: The couples return to their respective spouses, but in a cruel twist, the unfaithful woman discovers that her husband has been unfaithful to her behind her back all along. This revelation is brought to life with dancer Preciado’s entrance as the “other woman,” who uses her extreme flexibility and seductive abilities to taunt the original woman, asserting her dominance and power.
I don’t think I’ve ever before been so invested and drawn into a dance quite like this one, only to be blindsided by an ending that stirred such intense feelings of disgust and anger. It was like watching a powerful dramatic film unfold in the dark of a movie theater — enraptured, completely enveloped; I surprised myself with my reaction. The dancers brought such depth to their characters, making every moment feel deeply convincing and real.
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Yidam, by Rustem, offered a wholly different and unique experience. In the program, Rustem reflects on his journey with meditation, inspired by the act of observing the mind and the struggle to tame it. In the program notes, he openly shares his initial expectations versus the reality of the practice: “I naively expected to have this immediate ‘zen’ like experience. That I would simply close my eyes and all would be calm. The reality could not have been further from this expectation, resembling more of a stormy chaos with thoughts and feelings vying for attention.”
While watching the piece, it was as if I was attempting to meditate for the first time as well, soothed by the low lighting and lulled by the dancer’s naturalistic costumes-gray slacks and white tops, like gray stone against the snow. Yet I was also propelled forward at warp speed by the frenetic violins and the music’s anxious undertone composed by Michael Gordon in a piece called “Weather One.” My focus was pulled in all directions: eight dancers create diversions; a giant light in the back-left corner, like an all-seeing eye, casts an intense yellow beam onto the center of the stage; a dropped curtain becomes a massive blanket that the dancers pull over themselves; and a section of the floor at the back suddenly lifts, creating a sculptural element on stage cutting diagonally thought the space and casting shadows on the back wall. All the while, I was striving to find meaning and concentrate on the main couple, danced by Preciado and Milian organically tumbling through the piece-pushing, pulling, leaning, falling in an abstract yet compelling and never-ending conversation of cause and effect. It was beautiful, and, again, like Casual Act, it came across as honest and real. I felt as if I’d had a parallel experience with Rustem while trying to understand his work.
It was an enjoyable evening featuring two strong works that have evolved nicely over time, complementing each other beautifully while touching on universally human experiences and leaving a lasting impression. Throughout the performance, I couldn’t help but think that athletes in any sport have nothing on these dancers. Their incredible flexibility, strength, and understanding of their bodies and emotions allow them to adapt their movements to a wide variety of choreographic visions — something athletes simply cannot do. It’s a pity that our society often favors sports over dance, as people are truly missing out on the artistry and athleticism that dance and dancers offer.
Jamuna Chiarini is a dance artist, producer, curator, and writer, who produces DanceWatch Weekly for Oregon ArtsWatch. Originally from Berkeley, Calif., she studied dance at The School of The Hartford Ballet and Florida State University. She has also trained in Bharatanatyam and is currently studying Odissi. She has performed professionally throughout the United States as a dancer, singer, and actor for dance companies, operas, and in musical theatre productions. Choreography credits include ballets for operas and Kalamandir Dance Company. She received a Regional Arts & Culture Council project grant to create a 30-minute trio called “The Kitchen Sink,” which was performed in November 2017, and was invited to be part of Shawl-Anderson’s Dance Up Close/East Bay in Berkeley, Calif. Jamuna was a scholarship recipient to the Urban Bush Women’s Summer Leadership Institute, “Undoing Racism,” and was a two-year member of CORPUS, a mentoring program directed by Linda K. Johnson. As a producer, she is the co-founder of Co/Mission in Portland, Ore., with Suzanne Chi, a performance project that shifts the paradigm of who initiates the creation process of new choreography by bringing the artistic vision into the hands of the dance performer. She is also the founder of The Outlet Dance Project in Hamilton, N.J.
