To spark discussion, the Walker invites Twin Cities artists and critics to write overnight reviews of our performances. The ongoing Re:View series shares a diverse array of independent voices and opinions; it doesn’t reflect the views or opinions of the Walker or its curators. Today, Penelope Freeh shares her perspective on Karen Sherman’s Soft Goods, which makes its world premiere on the Walker stage December 8–10, 2016. Agree or disagree? Feel free to share your thoughts in comments!
Soft Goods, conceived and directed by Karen Sherman, directs the eye to what is usually unseen in performance. Light is shed upon what is deliberately kept in the dark, specifically the tech folks who make performance happen. But she also draws our attention to elements that support and allow them their day in the sun: power cords, hanging lights, Genie lifts, a tool box, a puff of smoke…
Soft Goods was created collaboratively over several years at multiple residency sites where tech needs could be experimented with in rehearsal. This is a very unusual opportunity in the performance world, and utterly necessary here. Dancers and technicians are equalized, and we are treated to insider banter, jokes, and hijinks as the piece escalates.
Sherman is known for her keen wit and clever direction, and she brings these fully to bear here. Even more impressive, however, is how the work uses those platforms to reveal touching and ultimately blatantly sentimental celebrations of performance and life itself.
Work is underway when we enter the theater. Nothing is overtly theatrical; we watch the quotidian. The piece formally begins when the house lights dim and the stagehands take center stage, bantering as they work, at once readying and breaking down a show.
Enter The Dancers, a moment that is repeated to great effect, a superheroesque face-off, sublime and ridiculous. The suitcases are my favorite.
Tension ensues between the crew and cast as each vie to do their jobs, which necessarily involves claiming stage time. An exaggerated technical jargon moment among the crew reminds us that these folks bend over backwards for directors, designers, and performers. It is a subtle and touching moment underneath the comedy, reminding us that the frame is as important as what’s inside.
The culminating moment of the show is a sustained section of dance that takes place entirely behind a cyc [or cyclorama, a large curtain wall], the dancers only appearing in silhouette against a sidewall and occasionally coming into view to change a costume, take an oxygen break, or demand a prop. Random and ridiculous objects fly over the cyc, and the crew attempting to wrangle the stuff of stagecraft is hilarious, the overt exaggerations utterly rooted in truth. Philip Glass’s In the Upper Room, famously used by master choreographer Twyla Tharp, is blasted here as accompaniment, a sly wink to iconic, ballet-centric dance history.
The end envelopes us in smoke, the smell of which takes me back. I am 13, sitting backstage and watching a dance from the wings. I have friend trouble at school, but in that moment I am safe and content to be a watcher, a smeller, inhaling my future and knowing that, as far as school was concerned, I’d be okay.
Soft Goods is many things. Like the above, it is memory and safekeeping. Another is a 360-degree celebration of all of the people and stuff that give performance life.