Audience Reviews

AUDIENCE REVIEW: Anne-Marie Mulgrew and Dancers Co. and Yu.S. Artistry Present "Two Worlds"

Company:
Anne-Marie Mulgrew and Dancers Co. (AMM & DCO) and Yu.S. Artistry

Performance Date:
June 29, 2024

Freeform Review:

The collective program escapes ambiguity with dances coinciding with two lyrical scales happening naturally. From classical to contemporary dance styles with poetry and a narrative sound for thinking creatively with neon cyclops glasses and an anthropomorphic agent. The dancers in Two Worlds, rather than depict a divided band of individuals, there was a descriptive language flowing from one original source, and it starts with A Flamboyance and a Funeral.

Beginning with A Flamboyance and a Funeral by Olivia Wood Ishiguro as a metaphor, for sharing a common human emotion, a visual play of color and realizing the spirit after death. This spirit gave us focus, in the form of a colorful bird, and its life force was represented by the use of fuschia. It seemed to live on in the dance after the bird, danced by Jennifer Kane makes a dying scene. Brought to life again by Olivia Wood Ishiguro in the use of fuschia.

The best part of this coming together is the uncertain analogies and how they connect to one another’s vision. Dancers’ input that AMM&DCO responded to, in conceptual ideas, and the evidence of an imminent threat in the world found resolution in their passionate embraces in the dance. A Flamboyance was a clear indication of symbolism. An interlocutor by the use of the fuschia in the costume carries one meaning to the overarching theme of ‘Two Worlds’. So, we can begin to materialize the sense of life and death, in order to attach meaning to thematic usages throughout with a duality of worlds.

The ideal being disrupted in an imaginary world in, Dream of A… demonstrated the illustrious power of the human intellect. Daring conventions of Chinese art, and a street style that uses horizontal vantage points to create new heights. Like the Chinese ink drawings, or surreal ghost stories in Japanese folklore adapted by Yu.S. Artistry for an adlib dreamscape. Intimate in an appearance, like a family, or in nature where customary behavior of love and beauty really becomes receptive to unity. Of opposing forces, there was a similarity to waking and dreaming, that felt lost in the wilderness of our subconscious. This seductive fiction with the puppetry, fan dance, the flowing robe and traditional sun hat of Eastern Asia, and the street wear of loose silken shirts created a minimal set. Rin Nagaya, and Olivia Wood Ishiguro were surrounded by shadow cast by Anya Kress, and Varvara Busco. While our first impression of dream images were a kin to some sci-fi characters in the shadows. The neon cyclopes, and long ears with a horn were qualities of a dream mismatched, or a combat of heroism with future technologies.

There was a real sense of placement in the connection of dreams, life after death, and the current state of the world that AMM&DCO associate dance with in their struggle to put into language with movement. The transient echo of science fiction in Yu.S. Artistry’s ambience, and the props, projection art, and mural design by Odili Donald Odita dedicated to a combined energy for place. The work communicated a place unknown, an indigenous people, and the time traveler that maneuvers through the parallels in the universe. An unidentified land, in the first half brought us into more clarity with AMM&DCO after intermission with ‘A Shout from the Bones.’

When the dance forces us to awaken back up again from our dream state, and relate now to this guided meditations, or a languishing yoga pose with A Shout. A Call to Action is the first section of an assortment of poems in eleven sections for us to absorb visually in the dance. A normal reverence returns to our minds, since Yu.S. Artistry implemented it in color and spirit, and this way The Box, Gestures, quick flash dances, and cycles of movement for thinking outside of the box. The box becomes a stage, and the megaphone, a sore sight for recollecting media images of protests and upended civilization. Then, the music, Street Urban Sounds Chaotic Atmosphere finishes the three sections.

Every choreographic decision uses its multi-sensory tools to fabricate this atrocity, in which we receive clarity from the dance world. Like a rambunctious piece, Quartet for the Living, section four, and The Red Section, an iconic reference to Anne-Marie Mulgrew’s anthropologist background and discovery of modern dance, as seen in the 2017 WHYY Friday Arts program, produced by Karen Smyles.

Two Worlds questioned a serene subconscious thrown to the wolves. How we internalize an atrocity, or the many issues around the world could leave one more unruly. Disassociating from the world, and ignorance of the actual carnage in the world deems one cowardly. And what items do we take with us into our dream states? To come out of it with more clarity, and not to be more haunted by reality comes through with the finale of A Shout in "All is One." It reimagined the appropriation of the popular theme song of Succession, “One is All,” and it courageously imagined Picasso’s Geurnica for our times. 

Author:
Chuck Schultz

Website:
WHYSEEART.com

Photo Credit:
Chuck Schultz