Audience Reviews

AUDIENCE REVIEW: CUNY DANCE INITIATIVE- Tabula Rasa Dance Theater premieres "Ship of Fools"

Company:
TABULA RASA DANCE THEATER

Performance Date:
September 20-21, 2024

Freeform Review:

Sound design:  Deco Delorean

Lighting and Scenic Design:  Christopher Annas-Lee

Choreography: Felipe Escalante

Costumes: Laili Lau, Rosario Medina

Music : Johann Sebastian Bach

Passio Domini nostri J.C. secundum Evangelistam Matthæum BWV. 244

(Excerpts)

Kommt, ihr Töchter, helft mir klagen

Buß und Reu

Aus Liebe will mein Heiland sterben

Erbarme dich

Tabula Rasa Dance Theater’s Ship of Fools concerns misdirected citizens who pay tribute to a fictional autocrat, a ruler whom they obey despite his grotesque incompetence. His all-powerful presence is indicated by an oculus-like light, from which multi-colored twisting tentacles descend, entrapping and releasing the performers, some of whom wear helmets that further emphasize their mindless submission.  The theme of irrationality and ineptitude in leaders, and the human reflex to follow them, is given further urgency by the complex score, which includes excerpts of Bach’s St Matthew Passion.  We see abstracted onstage what is now enacted daily in the world, where nations everywhere are misguided by extremist faith, unbridled egotism, and dangerous superstition. 

A highly sophisticated, dystopic homage to the 15th-century satirical poem of the same name by Sebastian Brant, this Ship of Fools gives forceful physical expression to the whole panoply of human foibles, from vanity and cowardice to self-delusion and avarice. 

The dance piece shows, through movement and allegory, the desperate suffering and the impulse for instant joy taking place in our modern societies and how we tormented humans are headed for disaster. 

The most disturbing actions occur toward the end of the piece, when faceless dancers, dressed in costumes bristling with long, loose metal scales, shake, stomp and march in terrifying unison, like primordial creatures ritualistically bringing about an apocalypse of their own making.  As one woman was overheard saying, “Now we know what the end of the world looks like.”

The audience, who trickled out of theater in a daze, were left to question those who govern us and to evaluate the criteria on which their judgments are based. 

Ship of Fools boldly defends the value of knowledge, wisdom, and justice and condemns the damage inflicted on human beings by authoritarian rulers both past and present. 

Author:
Sylvia Susskind

Website:
www.tabularasadancetheater.com

Photo Credit:
Steven Pisano