You’re sitting on a bench waiting for your train, and slowly you become aware of a young girl sitting peacefully next to you with no luggage, no coat, and no phone, wearing a distinctive blue shirt that looks hand-made. Than you notice a big crowd of people hanging over the railing of the second floor. She explains that she is part of a dance performance.
As for me, I was up on the second floor balcony, waiting for the storyline. The dancers were pretty much just walking around in the waiting room below, and if it weren’t for the absence of baggage, they didn’t look that much different from anyone else. I think that was part of the plan.
Eventually, all nine dancers made their way to the second floor balcony too. That’s when things started to get interesting. King Street Station, built in 1906, remodeled, and then restored by 2013, has retained much of its ornate Italianate grandeur, with a huge white-tiled waiting area downstairs and wedding cake-like decorative plastered columns, cornices, and filigree around the walls and balcony. Dancers dashed down the straight stretches of the long narrow hallway, then screeched to a halt at the last second. They twined themselves in unusual ways around the railings, sometimes peering over. And a couple of them dangled for a moment from a section of cornice. It’s a little bit tricky for the audience to see everything when the “stage” is in three different narrow sections which are all constantly occupied by shifting combinations of different dancers, and when you are invited to “follow” them. But again, I think that too was part of the plan.
For the final section, the action moved up the stairs to the third floor, into the ARTS gallery. Here, in this large mostly wall-free loft-like space punctuated by metal girders, some ambient music kicked in, and the dancers had more space to spread out and dance in solos, pairs, and trios, sharing the space, but taking turns with more complex moves and more “limelight.” My favorite part was when two of them climbed partway up a slanted white pipe that stretched up to the ceiling. The only distracting note was the video footage on the moveable walls that the dancers would occasionally disappear behind. This included historical footage of King Street Station, the dancers themselves rehearsing in the space, and scenes from the general neighborhood. Although it added another meta-layer to the themes of time and space, it was weird to see the dancers dancing in front of large-format footage of themselves dancing. But then, I’m not a fan of dance films, as I prefer not to have my focus distracted by close-ups, cuts or long shots.
A space is usually built for a purpose, but at the end of the day, it’s really all just scenery to stage the shows of our lives. You’re coming, I’m going, I’m arriving while you’re departing – we pass each other in rooms, hallways, and stairs, speculate on who we both might be at the moment of passing, try to make room for each other, and sometimes spontaneously interact. The media of Dance are time and space. This performance made me want to dance everywhere all the time, with anybody who was around. I guess that was the idea!
