Human Nature and Tinhouse Dance: Collaboration or Choreographic Committee?

In recent years Joanna Rotkin and Breanna Rogers have used "Tinhouse Dance" to present some wonderfully esoteric works about subjects from food and a dysfunctional family to fixing a car. Those works read well, had performance lives, and spoke to everyday concerns we deal with as humans. And Tinhouse presented those works in delightfully different places - like in the street, or in an art gallery. In the 2009 Boulder Fringe Festival "Tinhouse Dance" has teamed up with with Jayne Lee, Delisa Miles, and a company named "Human Nature," to present a lush work titled "Small Moment of Sky" in the Naropa University Performing Arts Center. That work involves twelve performers - some with extensive pedigrees - four umbrellas, four tubs filled with water, and buckets filled with sand, which is poured over performers in the tubs and eventually covers much of the performance floor. The umbrellas hang, are detached, spun, thrown, four dancers cavort in and around the tubs in various states of energy from somnolent to chaotic, still ensemble tableaus build and dissolve, people are wrestled to the floor, dragged through the sand, and dancer heads are soaked in water. At no time does any theme, purpose, or raison d'etre for any of this become apparent. Not in the performance. Not in any of the painfully sparse program notes. Not in the eclectic multiple choices for the sound score. In fact, it all appears as a work designed by committee that lost its way.

Some very brief ensemble movement sections read well. As does the stillness in the tableaus. But if stillness is there to frame something else - that something else never happens. Maybe the work would benefit from some major editing - but, for that editing to work the piece needs to be way, way better defined. If that happens maybe Rotkin can save it.

Donald K. Atwood MFA, Ph.D.

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