AUDIENCE REVIEW: Another take on: The Moving Beauty Series - T Production in "Redolent"
Company:
T Production
Performance Date:
3.4.15
Freeform Review:
Redolent, which was choreographed by Chieh Hsiung, the director of T Production and presented by The Moving Beauty Series on March 4th, 2015 is a dance theatre piece that has had me thinking about the nature of food and the impact it has on us as human beings.
Food when eaten alone makes people feel heavy, as if the weight of what has been consumed is pulling a person down. Food when eaten in the company of another person gives a person strength, comfort, pleasure, or agitated feelings. It all depends upon the food and the person. That is what I was shown by Redolent. Something salty and savory opens up all sorts of multifaceted conversations. Drinking alone gives a grown man fortifying strength and then makes him cry like a baby when he sees that the woman he loves is dancing with another man. The same alcohol gives that woman the hard resolve to be alone when she realizes that the man whom she has chosen is no good. A birthday party pulls out sweets and demands celebration before driving the main celebrant a little crazy with the prospect of so much sugar. And maybe with the prospect of getting older. So I wonder, do we decide what we eat based upon who is with us? Or is the fact that we are with a certain person what decides our meal?
I would never drink with my ex-girlfriend, but my ex-girl is the only one who could handle spicy food the way I like it. My mother and I love eating toasted wheat bread together. It's dry and it doesn't have a lot of flavor to it one way or another but for us it's the thing that we do. Almost like we're neutralizing our pallets so that we can discuss anything openly and honestly. My dad thinks it's funny that our shared comfort food is so bland. I think it's funny that he feels one way or another about it especially since he never eats with us. These are the kinds of thoughts that Redolent has filled me with. It's kind of interesting that I never thought about it before: how important a meal is or the significance of the meal we choose to share with the ones we love. I really enjoy that something like dance has opened up my mind this way. I've never seen a show like this before. At first it made me really uncomfortable and I found the conceit a little silly but the more I questioned it, the more I felt that I was being shown a certain kind of truth and a new way of seeing the world. The one thing I would have liked more of is more diverse dancing for the men. The women in this piece were given a full range of dancing, especially the splendid dancer known as Rain. Her cool to the touch performance around a stage perilously filled with empty bottles mesmerized me. All of the bottles were presumably consumed by the dancer and then cried away until she was left without a single tear drop left in her body. All she was left with was the resolve to continue on alone through the cold and empty world. The men were given many equally poignant moments but all with minimal movement. I wish that they had been given dance that was as athletic, intense, and engaging as that given to the women.
