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| Photo by Florence Baratay | clockwise from lower left: Kennis Hawkins, Ivy Baldwin, Hannah Heller and Samantha Allen
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Pushing the Fourth Wall
Katie Workum's Carlisle tests the edges of the stage
By QUINN BATSON
Offoffoff.com
Katie Workum has no qualms about keeping an audience waiting. She uses the time to set up her unexpectable surprises, sometimes odd conflicts and sometimes verbal feats of wordplay and connotation.
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| | | KATIE WORKUM: CARLISLE | Choreography by: Katie Workum.
Dancers: Samantha Allen, Ivy Baldwin, Kennis Hawkins and Hannah Heller with Ahreum Chung, Jae Im Chung, Jee Yeon Jang, Ah Rong Kim, Eunkyung Kim, Ji Yeun Lee
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Music by: Grizzly Bear; Live songs written and arranged by Katie Workum.
Sound design by: Jenny Seastone Stern.
Costumes by: Mindy Nelson.
Lighting design by: Amanda K. Ringger.
| | SCHEDULE | Dance New Amsterdam
October 10-12. 2008
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Carlisle, presented at DNA, certainly begins slowly. Tentative crawling and doggie movement accompanied by little blips of sound and static give the beginning a minimal, beastish, female quality. Little interactions of boundary-testing and exploratory touches give way to seat-swapping with fellow dancers as chairs, all with no apparent trajectory or urgency. A strange impasse puts two dancers on all fours into a very girlish high-pitched but nonviolent confrontation that draws the other two to intervene. Samantha Allen, Ivy Baldwin, Kennis Hawkins and Hannah Heller play the four protagonists well, each with a soft but firm delivery and similar movement and vocal skills.
Then, spoken loudly in unison, "My oh my, we're going to die!" takes the piece quickly down a different path of breathless and deftly funny terror. It's fairly difficult to keep track of all the little paths and interactions, but the piece nevertheless builds and grows as it goes. One element is a mysterious, nymph-like group of Korean women who come and go in a mirrored stage-right area, with an almost alternate-universe feel. The two strange but separate universes gradually begin to reflect each other and then to interact as their imaginary dividing wall melts, in a subtle, clever progression.
The end is sheer Workum wordplay. The four protagonists stand again in line across the stage and: tell us how they will deliver the goods; momentarily forget everything; ask us what we are doing after the show; and generally mess with our heads and any conventional expectations.
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OCTOBER 18, 2008
OFFOFFOFF.COM • THE GUIDE TO ALTERNATIVE NEW YORK
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