Company:  Instinct Dancecorps

Choreographer:  Angela Rosenkrans

Performers:  Jay Garcia, Gabbie Gulden, Tasi Harrington, Kiersten Lujan, Lydia Partridge, Trinity Pringle, Juls Tarango, (Understudies: Elva Howard, Baylie MacRae, Madeline McDonald, Alexis “Lexie” Montoya

This is one of those moments where we forget for a moment that these are students. The performances are tight – the themes, however mysterious, are delivered intact. We are drawn into the drama – slow, measured, intense. If anything, these young people are teaching us, the audience. About what exactly, we do not know but this much is certain. It is important, vital, urgent. Like the best of art, it transmits the emotion, not the literal meaning, and we are caught up in it, supplying our own version of the drama that Angela Rosenkrans and her Instinct Dancecorps troupe have created on the stage at SCC’s Images in Motion.

The performance immediately confronts us with a predicament. The company begins low to the floor, their hands vibrating intensely, their focused facial expressions leaving us in no doubt that this is a moment of almost existential anxiety. The fearful source of this turmoil is unseen, unknown, but our identification with the dancers makes it very real. The performance then evolves slowly, and it is this careful, deliberate movement that adds gravitas to the work and lends it credibility. In fact, there are moments when it comes to a halt entirely, the ensemble posed in a momentary tableau.

Rosenkrans introduces several gestures which are simple but loaded with emotional significance. There are circling arms, each performer staring at that space as if it enclosed a vital life force being protected from an unnamed other.  A hand over the heart seemed obvious, but even an uplifted arm gesture seemed to take on weight. The tightly grouped ensemble, frozen in momentary tableau, seemed protective and there was a touching moment near the end where the performers stared at their hands, placed together, palms upward in what seemed like an act of supplication or prayer.

I do not know what Rosenkrans’ intentions were with this piece. The title itself, “Passage”, seems to imply a transition from one place or form to the next. I had the feeling that I was witnessing a slowly unfolding tragedy. Something fearful and overpowering was gradually overtaking this isolated group and there was a terrible beauty in their deliberate, measured response. The final movement was heart-rending as, one by one, individuals were succumbing to the inevitable – the living catching the failing as they fall, passing them tenderly along offstage until finally, the group is gone.

For me, Passage was a significant work. Whatever meaning I found in the mystery presented by this performance is entirely what my imagination superimposed on it, but as an audience, that is all we have and my imagination was fully engaged. Angela Rosenkrans utilized her dancers with considerable restraint, their commitment to the deliberate movement and enigmatic gestures allowing her to go deeper and address a subject that was ultimately darker and communicated what for me seemed like a profound social/emotional journey – an elegant tragedy.

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