Audience Reviews

AUDIENCE REVIEW: Rogue Wave presents "(my battery is low) and it's getting dark"

Company:
Rogue Wave

Performance Date:
April 6, 2025

Freeform Review:

“My battery is low, and it’s getting dark,” is the final message NASA received from the Mars Rover Opportunity before it went dark in 2019. “(my battery is low) and it’s getting dark,” is also the title of Catherine Messina’s latest evening-length work on her dance company Rogue Wave which was performed at the Center for Performance Research (CPR) on Sunday, April 6th, 2025. In this work, Messina marries science and dance, using inspiration from astrophysics along with intricate phrase work that make the theoretical visceral and the extraterrestrial palpable from millions of miles away.  

This is not Catherine Messina’s first time blending science with dance. In her last evening-length work, “Bouquet,” Messina explored the dandelion-orchid theory in neuroscience which examines resilience and seeks to understand childrens’ diverse sensitivities to stressors in their environments. Through storytelling, movement, and hundreds of flower petals, Messina made scientific theory understandable and even relatable. Still, she has outdone herself with “(my battery is low) and it’s getting dark.” While “Bouquet” crafted a literal interpretation of scientific theory, “(my battery is low) and it’s getting dark,” created even stronger images and emotional responses by leaning into gesture and theatricality. One of these elements is the blank-covered book that is seemingly revered in the beginning of the piece, only to be ripped up and cast aside as the work progresses. While we as viewers can experience the anguish felt as the pages are torn or as the book is thrown across the room, we are also left with a multitude of questions: What book is it? What does it mean to these dancers? Why does it hold such power in this realm?  I appreciated the open-endedness of this work that both gave a clear trajectory but also left a lot up to personal experience and interpretation. We as an audience are forced to sit with the questions, many of which are never answered directly, further enriching the audiences’ role as part-witness, part-collaborator. Catherine Messina’s storytelling and ability to turn science into feelings is a talent worth noting. 

From a choreographic standpoint, the piece is overflowing with a variety of detailed phrase work. Messina's choreography is multilayered, detailed, and often quite fast. Watching the dancers move together through these phrases with specificity and speed, especially during the unison sections, was impressive, and the many partnering feats that Messina crafted with the cast were unique, creative, and thrilling. While the dancing was beautiful, there were a few moments that felt disjointed from the rest, and I wondered how those moments could be utilized to contribute to the overarching vision of the piece. Additionally, as the movement continued to flow, I yearned for some of them to be revisited as motifs throughout the piece. One motif that did clearly emerge was that of dancers being caught mid-air after running to their partner, seemingly suspending them in time and space before lowering them to the ground. This image was something we as audience members could hang onto and reinterpret every time it was brought back, and it took on new meaning every time I saw it. While I saw the buds of some of these moments throughout, and I wish they’d been leaned into more. Overall, this work was both intellectually stimulating and emotionally riveting, which is an extremely challenging task.

Mars Rover Opportunity was only projected to function for 90 days, but instead it beat the odds and continued reporting to NASA for 15 years before being taken out by a massive dust storm on the surface of Mars. This kind of resilience was pinnacle in “(my battery is low) and it’s getting dark.” The full cast stays on stage throughout the entire performance, and while there are some built-in moments of rest and observation, they never escape the audience’s gaze. Oftentimes the dancers go from witnessing on the edges of the stage to full-throttle phrase work instantaneously, gliding across the stage without a hint of hesitation. CPR is a white box theater that gives the audience an up-close view of all that the dancers are going through. Whether they wanted us to or not, we could see the effort going into the piece through their labored breath and dripping sweat, and it made the storyline all the more effective. Messina wrote in the program notes about the death of a star, and how “when a star dies, it explodes into a supernova right before, illuminating colors and light.” We got to witness that exact phenomenon in their trajectory. As the dancers moved toward the climax of the piece they expended more and more energy. Their partnering became more complex and their once-gestural movement became more expansive and full-bodied. The lights in the theater glowed a bright white light, illuminating the white walls and floor in a nearly blinding experience, and we were met with the vision that inspired it all: a supernova. 

Author:
Rush Johnston

Website:
www.rushjohnston.com

Photo Credit:
Mark Harris