Faye Driscoll will be presenting 837 VENICE BLVD for the last time ever in New York City (photo by Steven Schreiber)
837 VENICE BLVD / THERE IS SO MUCH MAD IN ME
The Performance Project at University Settlement
184 Eldridge St.
December 18-19, $10-$15, 7:30
212-453-4523
www.fayedriscoll.com
www.universitysettlement.org
New York-based dancer and choreographer Faye Driscoll will be saying hello and goodbye on December 18-19 at the Performance Project at University Settlement on the Lower East Side, where she’ll be presenting her 2008 hit, 837 VENICE BLVD, for the last time ever in the city while also offering a sneak peek at the work-in-progress THERE IS SO MUCH MAD IN ME, which will premiere at Dance Theater Workshop in April. Driscoll, whose frenetic dance video “Loneliness” was selected for the New Museum’s recent “Younger Than Jesus” exhibit, a compilation of work by fifty international artists under the age of thirty-three, also just directed one act of Taylor Mac’s five-act THE LILY’S REVENGE at HERE Arts Center. While the powerful, emotional, dialogue-heavy 837 VENICE BLVD, set to music by the late French punk Jacno, New Order, and Philip Glass, looks at identity and blame in childhood, the exhilarating THERE IS SO MUCH MAD IN ME deals with making connections. Driscoll, who describes her work as “multidimensional dance dramas that blur the lines between fantasy and reality, arousal and disgust, fun and violence, spectacle and authenticity,” also promises to serve milk and cookies at the show, so what’s not to love?
While GLOW was an intimate gathering in the Kitchen, where the small audience sat on four sides of the dance space, a tiny vinyl rectangle on the floor, MORTAL ENGINE turns out to be a much larger spectacle, performed on an steeply raked white platform at center stage of the vast Howard Gilman Opera House, where dancers walk, crawl, twist, turn, and hang on as the lights and sounds react to their movements, in a dazzling display. Two of the floor panels occasionally tilt up vertically, creating walls against which, at one point, two dancers wriggle, as if attached by a sticky substance, accompanied by a fascinating oozy sound. Unfortunately, at times the vastly talented crew gets caught up in the spectacular technology, as long patches of the piece abandon the dancers and simply show off amazing computer-generated interactive lighting and sound design that takes the audience away from the compelling narrative of duality and interconnectedness. But then smoke machines unleash a dense fog that becomes otherworldly as green lasers shoot out across the theater, involving the spectators in the gorgeous maelstrom, the bands of light manipulated onstage by two dancers. Even though a passing random thought of Laser Floyd is hard to avoid, it’s an unforgettable scene, the highlight of a choppy but fascinating night of dance theater.
