A trio of dancers hold long, luminescent rods of white light. The space feels cold and empty. Suddenly, it’s dark. One by one, as each rod turns back on, a trio of dancers are caught static in a forward moving pose, holding poles as walking sticks. It’s like we are driving down a road, and our headlights happen to flash upon sole wanderers in the night.
Still Inspired’s “There Is Still Magic Here,” which premiered at the Vittum Theater on Mar. 2, at 7:30 p.m., followed a longstanding tradition of dancers partnering with a visual artist to collaboratively create a live performance. For this show, the company chose Jennifer Cronin and her suite of eight works, also entitled “There Is Still Magic Here.”
The night wanderers harken me back to one of Cronin’s images offered up in the program: a green-lit path winding in a park under a deep purple and blue night sky—cool colors of the northern lights. Like the trio’s midnight trek, the painting feels cold and empty…but beautiful, too.
Cronin’s series of paintings, plus one graphite and pastel drawing, depict liminal spaces at different times of day: a phone booth shining under a single streetlamp, or a glowing neon “OPEN” sign hung on an unidentified building. The light source in each piece transforms the spaces, literally “coloring” them with mood. This refracting of light and creating color is equally explored through Still Inspired’s play with physical lighting.
Another example of this is about a third of the way through. A singular white light is pushed out from upstage right, contrasting with the soft red that bathes the rest of the scene. The company crowds behind the light, intently watching a soloist adeptly wriggle, dive and rave in the spot. Quickly, they all scramble to shine the light in a new direction to feature another dancer. It gives off the ecstatic feeling of surrendering to the dance floor in the middle of a dark and crowded nightclub. Looking back at Cronin’s series, I imagine that the “OPEN” sign in the painting is the entrance to that mysterious club.
But the evening isn’t simply separate vignettes of paintings come alive. An abstract journey is stitched together seamlessly between the eight sections and three choreographers (Annie Conway, Brian Hare, and Laura Thurston).
In the beginning, calming sounds of birds chirping and leaves rustling are overlaid with an alarm clock in the distance: We enter the dreamscape, but are still somewhat tethered in undesirable reality. All six dancers at one point perform a series of gestures reminiscent of everyday chores. They are bouncy and weighted, shaking off the drudgery.
As the journey continues, quartets and duets bob and weave. From our sloped theater seating, it’s like our viewpoint is from a cloud slowly floating through the sky. The landscape shifts below us, colors and ideas morphing like a mood ring. Eventually, the curtains are gradually all peeled back, and a whole new universe is revealed. Disco balls sit on pedestals and refract rainbows onto draped fabric: It’s a fever dream. Falling into unison, the company takes a deep and replenishing inhale as they stretch out in their new paradise.
Abruptly, they spit us back into reality. The stage left curtain opens at the very end to reveal a cluttered dining room table. The performers populate the seats, dressed in casual, everyday clothing. It is a scene of revelry. Drinks are poured, and laughter is shared.
Were we really dreaming? Well, our eyes have snapped open. The trick of the lights is over.
The company probed Cronin’s series of ordinary spaces by amping up the vignette filter to the highest level in the editing suite: The edges were softened, and they wandered around in the subtle emotions they extracted. And while the audience was lifted high, high up into our dreamiest of thoughts, the jarring ending seemed to be a lesson about coming down from the fantasy, too.
Magic comes from those distilled moments of silent, illuminated roads at dusk, or at 2 a.m.; however, candlelight shining onto the faces of friends can be just as curious, simple, joyful. The sounds of alarms are forgotten, and all you hear is a radio searching for a song and chatter filling a room. Daily life is not all drudgery, now is it? The performance reminds us that there’s magic there, too.
Still Inspired’s “There Is Still Magic Here” was held on Saturday, Mar. 2, at 7:30 p.m., at the Vittum Theater, 1012 N Noble St. For more information about “There Is Still Magic Here” and Still Inspired, please click the event link below or visit stillinspireddance.com.
