Dangerous Lorraines' "Connect/Disconnect" (draft)

I went to see the show at the Guild Theater by Sac State's Dangerous Lorraines Dance Troupe (DLDT).

I recognized a few people: Inertia DeWitt was dancing and Gabe Gabrielson was doing tech. In the audience, I recognized Gino P. and Kelli L. (I think).

The opening pre-show "Retro/Intro" featured a very slow motion dance. The dancers were barely moving, but just like that Outer Limits episode where privileged people's metabolism was speeded up, every time you looked at a dancer, their expression had unaccountably changed and they were now in a different position. When did that fellow (Leon Damasco) take off his jacket? When did some of the other dancers turn around? How do they keep their balance? It was a very nice number!

For me, the rest of the show was rather uneven. I could not locate the elusive concept driving the show. After a while, I decided that the show was trying to achieve a surreal impact, but I thought modern dance was the wrong vehicle to choose (Salvador Dali wasn't a modern dancer). At intermission I asked Gabe Gabrielson if he considered the show to be primarily theater, or dance. I was inclined to say theater, but he replied dance (since the cues were body positions).

My dissatisfaction really wasn't about the choreography or the dancing, but rather the suitability of the numbers. For example, the opening number after intermission was called 'Desire To Take Flight'. The dancers made as if to take flight, or at least to be thinking about it. But modern dance is all about breath control and controlling the body's center-of-mass. When a modern dancer plants their foot and places weight on it, you know. Sometimes you can even hear it in their breathing (especially if they wheeze from smoking - my first strong memory of modern dance, from the 70's).

But birds aren't like that at all. Birds hop. Birds flit. When they adjust their center-of-mass they do so with silly, reflexive head bobs. They don't fret about shifting their weight.

I remember visiting the San Diego Zoo in 1978. For ten minutes I watched a baby hippopotamus try to enter a pool of water. There was a slight slope, maybe half a degree, and the baby hippo was anxiously rocking back and forth trying to decide whether it was worth the risk. The slope was ridiculously slight, but the baby hippo's legs were short, and it was afraid.

Silly mammal. That is how most mammals think: 'Am I going to fall?'

On the other hand, it's hard to knock birds over. I remember how our family drove to San Diego and back with a caged parakeet and how the bird fell just once, after being blindsided by an abrupt stop. In contrast, mammals fall all the time. You hear about cowtipping, but do you ever hear about goosetipping? Ostrichtipping? Robintipping? No. These pasttimes have no practitioners.

Modern dance is very much a mammalian thing. If birds ran the show, modern dance would look much different.

But Marc, the number was 'Desire To Take Flight'. Surely mammals can feel the desire to fly. Surely modern dancers would love to take wing. Why not dance about that?

Yes, but humans are so unsuited to flight. They are so heavy! The mammals that do fly, primarily bats, are built a lot different than people. A LOT different! It's time for mammals to get real about their limitations!

So, I was unsatisfied with some of the dancing. Nevertheless the show came together for a satisfactory conclusion with 'Connect/Disconnect', which reprised some of the dancing earlier in the show, but also featured vigorous dancing by some of the men, and also featured people walking back and forth with cell phones. Since 1990, cell phone use has completely changed the way people walk down the street and it is ripe for exploration by dance companies of all sorts (although if I see lyrical ballet featuring cell phones I will shoot the choreographer).

A very nice, very solid conclusion to a thought-provoking show.