Liss Fain Dance review: Down a murky river
Updated 5:21 pm, Friday, May 17, 2013
Liss Fain's "The Water Is Clear and Still," which the choreographer revived Thursday evening at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Forum after its local premiere last year at Z Space, exults in the promise and perils of multimedia installations. All such ventures should carry a warning: If you fracture the audience's attention, you may never regain it.
Despite much to see and hear, and despite a handful of eloquent moments, it was all too easy to drift away from the 60-minute piece, to which the choreographer has now appended a prologue, "Solid Ground." The collaborative elements of the piece consist of six dancers, the ambulatory actor Val Sinckler mouthing excerpts from Jamaica Kincaid's short-story collections "See Now Then" and "At the Bottom of the River," and a mixed musical score, some of which was commissioned from Dan Wool.
The center of interest, however, is the outstanding production and lighting design by Matthew Antaky, whose contribution to Bay Area dance has never been adequately celebrated. For Fain, Antaky has fashioned an immersive environment ringed by nine metallic trees with sprouting branches and multilevel bases. They form a stylish, futuristic forest through which the dancers flow and slide.
Fain encourages the audience to wander around the decor, and it is true that the varying perspectives do lend a sense of both order and complexity. In this space, the choreographer can set a duet you can experience in close-up, while, simultaneously, offer a companion pairing across the room, and both encounters will fall within your line of vision. It's a fascinating phenomenon.
Although Fain has mastered the space, what happens within it does not consistently command attention. Even with a body mike, Sinckler's accounts of Kincaid's tales of Caribbean life are sometimes inaudible, and the running commentary continues virtually nonstop. It battles for your ear with Wool's attractive percussion score, a bit from the Anonymous Four and the sublime Adagio from Schubert's C Major Quintet. The latter, with bodies dropping in place, generates the worst choreography of the evening.
In the abstract, Fain's vigorous contribution, performed in stocking feet, abounds in weighted tributes to an earlier era of modern dance. Robust arm movements, beginning with the beating of chests early on, violent extensions and nervous jumps dominate. Yet certain episodes, like a strange interlude of bodies thrusting into the air, suggest a more innovative approach. Unisons dominate group forays, which are rare because of the configuration of the installation.
Near the end, Fain finally breaks through to more personal moments. Watching Alec Lytton methodically running his hands over his partner's head indicates possession and less savory possibilities.
But Sinckler's narrative and the dancing rarely mesh thematically and rhythmically. Only in one episode, a lecture to a young woman approaching marriage, do movement and meaning collide with memorable ends. The other dancers, all in Mary Domenico's simple rust-hued costumes, were Jeremiah Crank, Katherine Hawthorne, Megan Kurashiga, Shannon Kurashiga and Carson Stein, and they worked very hard.
Liss Fain Dance: "The Water Is Clear and Still." Through 5 p.m. Sunday. Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Forum. $18-$30. 701 Mission St., S.F. (415) 978-2787. www.lissfaindance.org.