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By Robert Johnson
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Published on October 24, 2022
Photo: Walter Wlodarczyk
Title picture : Cara McManus, Beau Bree Rhee, and Caitlin Scranton in Beau Bree Rhee, Shadow of the Sea, 2022. Performance view, W 20th Street between 10th and 11th Avenues,
Artist and Choreographer: Beau Bree Rhee
Ensemble: Bria Bacon, Cara McManus, Chaery Moon, Caitlin Scranton
Audio Engineer and Sound Design: Michael Hernandez // Dancer-Studies: Mariah Anton, Savannah Jade Dobbs
Curator: Alison Burstein // Curatorial Assistant: Angelique Rosales Salgado
Production Manager: Zack Tinkelman // Production Supervisor: Tassja Walker
Assistant Stage Managers: Joe Galan and KC Athol // Audio Assistant: Siena Sherer // House Managers: Nico Grelli, Lindsay Hockaday, David Sierra, Yael Shacham, Neal Medlyn, Sacha Yanow, Joe Walkerman
Choreographer Beau Bree Rhee is worried. She has been studying the forecasts of climate scientists who believe that in 50 to 100 years the East and West coasts of Manhattan will be vulnerable to annual flooding. No scientific consensus exists, but the prospect of disaster is always exciting — just ask the TV meteorologists.
Cara McManus, Beau Bree Rhee, and Caitlin Scranton in Beau Bree Rhee, Shadow of the Sea, 2022. Performance view, Pier 64, September 21, 2022. Presented by The Kitchen in partnership with Madison Square Park Conservancy. Photo by Walter Wlodarczyk.
To raise awareness of the potential danger, Rhee has created Shadow of the Sea, a rambling dance that she and her fellow dancer-activists performed outdoors on Wednesday. After tracing crooked pathways through streets that storm surges may inundate someday, the dancers occupy a spacious lawn in Madison Square Park, interacting with a sculptural installation by Cristina Iglesias. Divided into eight sections Rhee calls “stanzas,” Shadow of the Sea received its third and final performance on October 20, which was co-presented by The Kitchen and the Madison Square Park Conservancy.
Cara McManus, Beau Bree Rhee, and Caitlin Scranton in Beau Bree Rhee, Shadow of the Sea, 2022. Performance view, W 20th Street between 10th and 11th Avenues, September 21, 2022. Presented by The Kitchen in partnership with Madison Square Park Conservancy. Photo by Walter Wlodarczyk.
Rhee’s work is sternly formalist, yet even at its most austere Shadow of the Sea has the lurid appeal of a disaster movie inviting us to imagine today’s busy neighborhoods transformed into a network of desolate canals. Someday, maybe, FEMA workers will paddle inflatable dinghies on the West Side Highway answering the feeble cries of the drowning.
In this frame of mind, we set out from Pier 64, on the Hudson River, scrambling after Rhee and Cara McManus. Crossing the highway, we encounter a contrary tide of tourists headed to Chelsea Piers — if only those heedless pleasure-seekers knew what WE know! Along the route, we pass bistros and cafés destined one day to become the haunt of starfish and crabs; and art galleries fated to become aquariums, with fishes swimming in the windows.
Cara McManus, Beau Bree Rhee, and Caitlin Scranton in Beau Bree Rhee, Shadow of the Sea, 2022. Performance view, 10th Avenue and W 20th Street, September 21, 2022. Presented by The Kitchen in partnership with Madison Square Park Conservancy. Photo by Walter Wlodarczyk.
Every so often, Rhee and McManus pause to exploit a detail of the cityscape. They draw our attention to mothers playing with their babies in a park (cute, but doomed). The two dancers stretch luxuriously on a traffic-island while waiting for the light to change, and they cling like flotsam to a scrap of chain-link fence. Then they separate, one following the projected 50-year floodplain, and the other the projected 100-year floodplain, coming together again at 9th Avenue. Will the area west of 9th Avenue be OK? The pace is lively, and despite Rhee’s somber intentions, this first “stanza,” dubbed “A Brutal Meditation,” is enormous fun.
Bria Bacon, Cara McManus, Chaery Moon, Beau Bree Rhee, and Caitlin Scranton in Beau Bree Rhee, Shadow of the Sea, 2022. Performance view, Madison Square Park, September 21, 2022. Presented by The Kitchen in partnership with Madison Square Park Conservancy. Artwork pictured: Cristina Iglesias (Spanish, b. 1956), Landscape and Memory, 2022. Bronze, stainless steel, electrical pump, and water. Five works, each approximately 10 x 6 x 3 feet. Installation view, Madison Square Park. Collection the artist, courtesy Marian Goodman Gallery. © Cristina Iglesias 2022. Photo by Walter Wlodarczyk.
An ancient creek runs somewhere beneath the land now covered by Madison Square Park, and Iglesias’ sculptural installation, Landscape and Memory, pretends to uncover it. Iglesias has opened trenches in the ground that reveal gnarled roots of bronze and artificial rocks with water running over them. On ground level, Rhee has laid out a semi-circle of footlights and folding chairs for visitors, delimiting a performance space; and it seems odd that a choreographer so concerned with the environment would begin by imposing this formal order on the landscape. Her vocabulary, too, is often spiky and technical, without the illusion of naturalness, so the pairing with Iglesias’ work feels incongruous.
Bria Bacon, Cara McManus, Chaery Moon, Beau Bree Rhee, and Caitlin Scranton in Beau Bree Rhee, Shadow of the Sea, 2022. Performance view, Madison Square Park, September 21, 2022. Presented by The Kitchen in partnership with Madison Square Park Conservancy. Artwork pictured: Cristina Iglesias (Spanish, b. 1956), Landscape and Memory, 2022. Bronze, stainless steel, electrical pump, and water. Five works, each approximately 10 x 6 x 3 feet. Installation view, Madison Square Park. Collection the artist, courtesy Marian Goodman Gallery. © Cristina Iglesias 2022. Photo by Walter Wlodarczyk.
“Stanzas” 2-8 are distinguished mostly by changes in background music and by eruptions of poetry. Whether dancing to B.B. King’s seductive ballad “Why I Sing the Blues,” or to Jeremy Toussaint-Baptiste’s industrial sound-score “Big Turtle,” the dancers remain cool and impervious, never reacting to the music’s wildness or to contrasts in atmosphere. They march across the lawn, or trace the periphery. Herding together, they hop in attitude or make a circle of their arms and swing it around. Perched on black floor-cloths, they stay alert as in an exercise class. Movement themes emerge, most notably a cross-armed gesture that appears to shield the face (though the program informs us this is a gesture of protest). The choreography for the various stanzas seems interchangeable, and the piece ends abruptly without resolution.
Beau Bree Rhee in Beau Bree Rhee, Shadow of the Sea, 2022. Performance view, Madison Square Park, September 21, 2022. Presented by The Kitchen in partnership with Madison Square Park Conservancy. Artwork pictured: Cristina Iglesias (Spanish, b. 1956), Landscape and Memory, 2022. Bronze, stainless steel, electrical pump, and water. Five works, each approximately 10 x 6 x 3 feet. Installation view, Madison Square Park. Collection the artist, courtesy Marian Goodman Gallery. © Cristina Iglesias 2022. Photo by Walter Wlodarczyk.
A gentle outlier is the stanza titled “Rest,” in which the floor-cloths return. Rhee jackknifes her body, and then turns comfortably on her side. As her posture evolves dreamily, at last she seems defenseless. Where will this body shelter when the storms come?
