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Broken heartland
Doug Varone and Dancers' "The Bottomland" looks like a wholesome celebration of
American community, until traces of darkness and destruction creep in.
By SARAH CARLSON
Offoffoff.com
At first glance, "The Bottomland," an evening of dance theater based on an
imagined backwoods community in rural Kentucky, may seem totally out of
place in sleek, stylized New York City. Plain and unadorned, Doug
Varone and Dancers snap their suspenders and ruffle their cotton skirts
to a string of Patty Loveless tunes. Our beloved Doug Varone has gone
country western and slapped white wholesome goodness all over it! But
what seems initially to be a conventional depiction of heartland America
later transforms into a disturbing journey through the caverns of the
soul. With heart wrenching clarity, Mr. Varone shows us that we New
Yorkers may have more in common than we may think with our rural
counterparts in this bold, emotional tour de force.
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| BOTTOMLAND |
Dancers: Doug Varone and Dancers.
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| SCHEDULE |
Lowes theatre
34 street manhattan NY
Dec. 4-22, 2002
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Part one incorporates a striking video backdrop shot on location in
Mammoth Cave National Park. The dancers stand with stern defiance
looking almost as weathered as the stone that surrounds them. A young
woman dances shyly with an older man. A happy couple contort mouths and
torsos in a comedic gestural conversation. A cheery church revival
inspires exuberant, infectious dance. A community takes shape unfolding
simultaneously onstage and onscreen.
Combining video with live performance can be tricky as it is often
difficult to effectively direct the audience's attention between the
two. In this case, both meld into each other as the sheer size of the
video screen provokes a feeling of immersion, the background enveloping
the foreground. With frequent closeups on a screen of this magnitude,
however, the video threatens to overwhelm the scale of live
performance. The larger-than-life footage is ironically more real than
real life. But even while daunting at times, the cave video harkens to
an interior landscape of grandiose proportions. Perhaps more is
happening than we suspect·
Part two abandons the video for three-dimensional rolling houses. A
terrific situational device, the uniform farm houses, designed by Allen
Moyer, divide public space and draw us into the private lives of each
family. Here we find that this community, so simple and happy on the
outside, is actually plagued with betrayal, rejection and immense
loneliness. Walls of humiliation, racial prejudice and abandonment
divide relationships, breed bitterness, and produce a community of
strangers, together but alone. Strangely familiar, I might add, to what
many experience in New York.
Daniel Charon gives an impassioned performance as the local preacher
who, ignited by fire and brimstone, alternately cares for his community
and leads to its destruction. One moment reconciling husband and wife,
the preacher is the main culprit in inciting a racial riot the next.
Adriane Fang and Eddie Taketa give riveting performances as Asian
immigrants who are treated as cultural outcasts and violently stripped
of both clothing and dignity at the climax of act two. Unlike his
previous work, Varone does not leave much to the imagination in these
theatrical eruptions.
Doug Varone is a master craftsman well-known for his ability to mold
movement and gesture into intensely powerful human landscapes. Rarely,
though, has Varone tackled such a linear narrative as "The Bottomland." The
relative abstraction of prior creations has ensured an exceedingly broad
emotional reach. While clear characters and story arc may make his work
more accessible to some, they detract from its overall ability to
speak. Perhaps I'm a purist, but to me Varone's craft is confined by
these structures and loses some of its spark.
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DECEMBER 21, 2002
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