Reviews were great and audience response fervent for the first weekend of Whim W’Him’s current SENSATION program at the Cornish Playhouse in Seattle Center, also running January 27-28, 2017. Whether your state of mind is gloom or euphoria, escape or embrace (or one in the pursuit of the other), something in this show will speak to you.
There must be something in the air. Lines in the movement and shadows in the masterful lighting of Michael Mazzola endow the evening with a certain visual unity, despite the 3 pieces disparate themes, and although they were separately conceived, choreographed and rehearsed, without their authors seeing either of the other creations first.
Four-square lines, momentarily present the dancers in profile or head-on to the audience, before dissolving…
… diagonals with strange, heiroglyphic hand motions, add mystery…
…while shadows cast on walls, heighten or diminish individual characters…
…amplifying the urgency of a moment…
And yet, the 3 pieces investigate quite different approaches, frames of mind, moods. In play-by-play Penny Saunders follows the trajectory of an Idea personified
Larry Keigwin‘s Line Dance plays light-heartedly with both the austere, abstract lines of modernist art and the human interaction of traditional line dances.
And in Catch and Release, by Whim W’Him artistic director Olivier Wevers, hurt, healing & hope are explored, on a path that leads to the edge of suicide and back.
The solos, duets, and trios that also feature in the SENSATION program will be the subject of next week’s post, along with some of the insightful comments and intriguing questions raised by audience and dancers in after-show conversations, as well as by reviewers.
Photo Credit: Bamberg Fine Art Photography