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IMPRESSIONS: Cameron Barnett & Fiona Schlegel's "Must Come Down" at Kestrels
By Hannah Lieberman
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Published on April 15, 2025
"Must Come Down" cast. Photo by Effy Grey
Cameron Barnett & Fiona Schlegel
Must Come Down
Director/Choreographer: Cameron Barnett
Associate Choreographer/Rehearsal Director: Fiona Schlegel
Original music: Bernadette Bradley, with additional lyrics by Cameron Barnett
Costumes: Hannah Qin
Lights: Cameron Barnett
Cast: Cameron Barnett, Hanna Golden, Mack Lawrence, Johnny Mathews III, Anna Rice, Fiona Schlegel, Kayla White, Kiara Williams
Kestrels, 188 6th Street, Brooklyn, NY
February 26 - 28, 2025 @ 8 PM
At Kestrels, a studio and performance space in Gowanus, two sets of risers sat parallel to each other on either side of the white-walled and uneven wood-floored loft. Audience members spoke at museum volume while their conversations were museum-echoed. Yellow-white curtains hung haphazardly about the cozy, warmly-lit space.
“Must Come Down” by Cameron Barnett and Fiona Schlegel opened as musician and songwriter Bernadette Bradley emerged through a white door, shuffled her sheet music, plugged in her guitar, and began to sing, her voice vibrant and clear. One at a time, band members Donna Kirby (banjo), Jesse Markowitz (violin), and Evan Vautour (mandolin) joined her to conjure a rich, folksy nostalgia.
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The dancers also entered one at a time, with Schlegel first to emerge; I was quick to register her as a different kind of performer through the immediacy of her expansive, energetic intention. In an overall dress and striped top, she straightened her arms in front of her like sensors in a shape resembling dowsing rods, her audible breath like the wind.
As makers, Barnett and Schlegel orchestrated moments that instructed the audience on how to engage with the work. When dancer Hanna Golden emerged in a white billowy skirt, she paused at the margin of the dancing space to peer over the shoulder of a musician. Here, I inferred that the band and the dancers inhabited different spaces in the same world, separated by a fragile plane.
Once the full cast arrived, they engaged in a score of collapsing, recovering, hugging, and running with senses of wonder, labor, and quiet responsibility. When, in typical music concert fashion, Bradley introduced herself, the band, and the next song, I noticed the dancers’ silence relative to her conversational tone. The musicians felt closer to the world I inhabited as an audience member, while the dancers’ world felt contained, like a diorama.
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The music resumed with the space abruptly drenched in warm, yellow-orange light. The dancers’ energy lifted as well, and they swept, skipped, bounded, and fell in and out of the space and each other. Mack Lawrence exhibited remarkable play and risk within set material; Kayla White’s displayed a finesse of gravity in her soaring jumps and precise, soft landings. I saw real laughter and joy amid prideful posing and virtuosic, weighted, postmodern-esque choreography. The work unfolded as a series of vignettes that varied in mood and complexity but did not appear continuous; each formed a complete thought of its own.
Schlegel reiterated her first solo, but with more urgency, weight, and speed. She gathered the energy left over from a lively vignette, swirled it up, and exploded with thrashes and slices over and over again, her steps heavy and deliberately loud. Her tone of premeditation and importance registered like a well-rehearsed proclamation. Her final dowsing-rod gesture lifted to a high release of quiet levity, only to burst open once again. This solo contrasted with the discontinuous, episodic structure of “Must Come Down” as Schlegel leaned into duration, rigor, and pause. If this were a work of literature, she’d be a reliable narrator — observant, astute, and compelling. I was willing to follow her despite not having a clue where she was going.
The lights went cool and dim, as they would remain for the rest of the work; the music shifted to a melancholy and resolute tone. With a sense of purpose akin to children’s movies about the Industrial Revolution, the cast of dancers took to rearranging a series of sandbags and pulleys. This rigging system lifted the yellow-white sheets into the air so they billowed like sails.
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With this shift, the musicians departed without fanfare, taking their equipment with them and emptying the space they had once claimed. When the dancers seized the sonic void, humming in unison the final note of the musicians' last song, I felt closer to their world, like we’d finally entered their snowglobe. Standing plainly throughout the space, they cast their voices and gazes deliberately elsewhere.
They appeared to regain awareness of one another as a recorded soundscore began, releasing an eerie, windy whistle. Slowly, one by one, they swayed from left to right, tempting and submitting to gravity with increasing audacity. Before long, each dancer was operating as an individual pendulum, falling and running from the edges of the space at full tilt.
Barnett and Schlegel succeeded in creating choreographed chaos that did not appear premeditated. Bursts of unison movement revealed the dancers’ specific and individually-crafted pathways as part of a larger whole. They traveled bravely and ferociously, grunting often, and briefly met one another in counterbalances that collapsed. Johnny Mathews III propelled their expansive, lanky frame into huge, breathy sweeps. In contrast to the warmth and levity of previous sections, the space became infused with urgency.
The ensemble gathered on the far wall to collaboratively elevate one performer, who lingered upside-down with hands on their counterparts and feet on the white brick wall. Lit from beneath and within, the structure evoked a sculpture in a museum. A warm orange glow seeped through the spaces between bodies, still mostly contained, like a secret. The shape proved sturdy; Mathews was last to arrive and they slid into place with ease. The shape dissolved as the dancers found themselves back in the center of the space. Low moans escaped from their heavy breathing, and we were left with their sounds of exhaustion as the lights went out.
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The world the dancers and musicians built together fell apart in an instant. Though often complex and hard to follow, the scaffolding of “Must Come Down” — complete vignettes, dedicated performers, and a thorough sense of collaboration — was steadfast. I noted to a friend as I was leaving that the work appeared purposeful and well-rehearsed. Such robust, intricate world-building must be the sum of a group’s utter commitment to a thing. And while I am not entirely sure what the thing was, I know that it took trust, collaboration, and thought to make it — and that’s probably the point.
