SeeChicagoDance.com

Khecari "The Clinking"

By Laura Molzahn

What's a lowesleaf, anyway? The analytical mind wants to know.

But the poetic mind doesn't care. Instead it's thrilled by the many connections and discoveries, as well as the unsolved mysteries, of Khecari's "The Clinking." This is the "current phase" of an investigation of fairytale tropes that concludes in July at the Storefront Theater with "The Clinking, Clanking Lowesleaf" (also the title of a "Beauty and the Beast"-style 1854 German fairytale). Khecari's fascinating precursor to the full-length work runs only through tonight, Friday, at the Hamlin Park Fieldhouse --- whose transformation is yet another reason to catch the show.

Discovery begins with the ingenious program, a flowerlike piece of origami so intricately folded you hate to open and destroy it. It includes the usual info, but also runic glimpses of texts and a long list of opaque section titles --- which do shed light on the experience after you've had it. Or, more accurately, confirm it. Even more striking is the way Khecari has rearranged and transfigured the Hamlin Park space; changes in the seating and the lighting mess with its usual boxy, seemingly immutable structure and confound our concepts of stage and backstage.

"The Clinking" is basically the baby of dancers Julia Rae Antonick and Jonathan Meyer, but musician/composer Joe St. Charles and lighting designer Jacob Snodgrass also play crucial roles. St. Charles, performing live as usual, eschews his often nerve-jangling style in favor of gentler gamelan-influenced repetitions, punctuated by more explosive percussion. There's no loss in eeriness. Snodgrass's breathtaking designs (which he himself sometimes creates with a hand-held light) reinforce that sense of lurking danger. The cinematic play of light and shadow suggests film noir and horror flicks, where what can be seen and what can't be seen are so crucial. "You can see me, but I can't see you" is a hair-raising feeling.

Much of "The Clinking" raises the hair on the back of your neck. Ever had one of those nightmares where someone/something is literally breathing down your back? The feeling of primal terror is way out of proportion to the action --- and again, partly because what's behind you can't be seen. It's my theory these dreams are vestiges of the days when humans were hunted by other animals. But at any rate, here the movement of an arm slowly slicing across the other person's shoulder from behind, or of a hand creeping and curling up the other person's back like the tendril of a poison plant, evokes the same feeling.

Antonick and Meyer have long explored duet forms, including such combative ballroom dances as the tango and the one-on-one stylized combat of capoeira. Their interactions in "The Clinking" often have a hostile edge, or at the least the creepy interplay of romantic approach and aggression. Like boxers, they sometimes retreat to opposite corners only to engage and disengage yet again. The question "who's winning?" becomes "who has agency?" Because generally one or the other person does take control, just as the leader guides the follower in ballroom dance.

In fairytales, that agency takes the form of magical powers. But it's not always clear which people have them, an ambiguity captured in the way Meyer and Antonick switch control back and forth between them. Or create a gestalt, as in the closing moments of "The Clinking," where it's impossible to say who's in control.

The other fairytale element woven like a golden thread through "The Clinking" is magical transformation, of both the performers and the space. In one section ("Snufflopod," I think) Meyer is an insect-like animal, top of the head on the floor, hands clicking into grotesque angular shapes. Antonick follows slowly behind, as if riding in a carriage drawn by the beast. Eventually Meyer curls out of his jagged poses, flips, and stands upright. The creature has become a man. A comical yet creepy section ("Joint Dance"?) displays the same animate/inanimate ambiguity of such fairytale classics as "Coppelia" and "The Nutcracker" as well as pop-culture fairytales like the Disney movies.

Episodic and associational rather than structured, "The Clinking" is perhaps not quite ready for prime time. Nor is it intended to be. And certain elements were completely baffling, at least to me, like the part where what look like dried-up slices of brownish-orange cheese rain down on Meyer. But this is an incredibly promising, magical start to Khecari's project.

 

Reviewed by By Laura Molzahn on 12/16/2011 at 1:25 PM