The Decorative Raw

To spark discussion, the Walker invites local 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 Thursday night’s OTRO TEATRO by luciana achugar Agree or disagree? Feel free to share your thoughts in comments!

An environment establishes itself, a humid one, where humans recline and shed their skins like reptiles.

For a long while there is a lone figure onstage, wearing a sparkling fabric overhead, draping to the knees. The figure circles and chants, and slowly we discern that some, from their seats among us, are joining this incantation. Sympathetic responses emit yawns and stretches, deliberately just louder than usual. There is a meditative quality as the tempo increases. The figure retreats upstage. Against the back wall a new texture takes hold, a rumbling that causes the feet to shimmer, ambulating the figure forward again, toward us.

This episode takes place three times, accumulatively lasting about a half an hour. With each repeat the passage imprints itself more deeply onto the world. It rocks it.

The figure reveals her red-streaked nakedness. This reads like war paint and ties together the notions of primal and ritualized, raw and decorative. She begins a reclining solo, sensuous and curvy. I don’t detect pleasure per se, but a kind of indulgence, a relishing.

Another figure has slowly made its way across the back, also shrouded. The two form a stacked image, a unison squatting with a side-to-side motion that brings them together. They draw upwards and sway in circles, connected and chanting anew.

A woman in street clothes gets drawn into the mix and it feels like an abduction, so incongruous is this new presence compared to the context we’ve come to know. She is manipulated into the space, performing a sleepy, dreamy standing tumble. Eventually she makes her way upstage and frames a corner where floor and wall meet, slowly extending her long legs and shape shifting as she reclines.

Over the course of the rest of this long work performers keep adding in. Bodies, in various states of undress, accumulate to respectively experience for themselves and elaborate upon movement motifs. There’s a walk on all fours: hands slide out, feet slide in, hands release, hands slide out, feet slide in, hands release…There’s “legs against the wall”: either slowly and experimentally extending/lifting/lengthening or releasing and flinging back hard, hips thrusting. There’s an extra-wide second position grande plie gyration. There’s hip thrusting relocation. There’s step leaping into a wall, run back, repeat.

At the height of this visual and aural cacophony a performer sets about unrolling tape onto the back wall. The design has straight and articulate lines traversing the wall’s entire length. As bodies conglomerate into a spread-out pile center stage, tape encroaches upon the floor. Shapes become 3D, portals are formed, entrances or exits.

The house lights come up, there is a brief smattering of applause, and slowly, the audience starts to leave. I stay awhile, watching as many performers add in to the taping of the space. Wall and floor meet, horizontal and vertical. Straight shapes and round bodies intersect, worlds collide. The ecosystem that was this piece bleeds into starts to feel like a post-show moment. Performers release their performativeness and relate in more quotidian ways.

There are all kinds of blurry in this work and the end is no exception. Eventually I make my way away, assured that I witnessed an endpoint of sorts and that the art still goes on, even as the theater clears.

OTRO TEATRO by luciana achugar runs through March 1 in the McGuire Theater.