Choreographer: Bridgette Borzillo
Performers: Laura Belvado, Rebecca Boizelle, Maddi Miloscia, MacKenzie Mirenda
The exterior performance space for Rooted In Movement, a residential back yard, has been populated with an eclectic variety of ad hoc structures and props to invite site-specific work from the participating choreographers. This is subject to various interpretations. Some choreographers opt to simply transfer a staged work to an open space in this backyard venue. Bridgette Borzillo and her CaZo crew took the challenge seriously and built their piece entirely around the central stand of trees with its tiny platform/stage. In doing so, they explored literally every possibility, creating sequences on the ground around the trees, through the trunks, on the tiny stage wedged between the boles of the trees and, to my great amazement, up in the branches. Short of setting the whole thing on fire and dancing in the flames, there really wasn’t an opportunity they missed.
Constrict-ED is a social awareness performance meant to illustrate the plight of a child facing a life-long struggle with asthma. Unfortunately, as viewed, the performance was given a minimal introduction without even a title, and though I asked, I had no access to a program and the back-story. This was offset by an earlier promotion of the piece which, as I recalled, mentioned asthma as the subject, so I had something, however thin, to go on. Fortunately, I believe this clue was enough to identify the theme of breathing and a struggle for breath which was well developed in the piece.
This was aided in particular by a large sheet held in tension between the dancers which would rise and fall, fill and deflate, in a representation of the action of the lungs. I thought this was a particularly brilliant prop, both in its conception and execution. It was hardly literal, yet the effect translated effectively, its billowing motions correlating with both breathing and the graceful motions of the dancers. Big kudos here to the costumes – form-fitting white body suits with a discreet attachment for the sheet so that it could move with the dancers’ bodies independent of their hands.
This may have been a serious subject, but I didn’t perceive the performance as dark or foreboding. And while there was a depiction of tension and struggle, it was also a thing of grace and beauty, interspersed with moments of drama. While it was confined spatially to the cluster of trees and the area immediately surrounding them, it was never restricted artistically, with the dancers moving independently at times, linked in tension with the sheet at others which could then transform itself into a rope or be used as a sling to cradle a dancer (a representation of helplessness? suffocation?). The piece was continually inventive, occasionally chaotic – even surprising, as when all four dancers suddenly and simultaneously mounted various branches of the trees. This was not the first time this had been done. Performers in a previous iteration of Rooted had also utilized the upper branches of the same trees but that had involved some fairly obvious climbing. The mechanism here was unclear, as these dancers seemed to simply spring into the canopy. Suddenly, they were just there. It was impressive.
Constrict-ED, while a shorter performance, had a strong conceptual basis that is highly representative of Borzillo’s work and a complex execution effectively delivered by her talented CaZo dancers. The attention to detail, innovation and coordination in the costumes and props are hers to claim as well. As site-specific performances go, they really don’t get more focused or thoroughly integrated than this. And while, at the time of viewing, I was not privy to the back-story, Constrict-ED still conveyed the essence of its concept while managing to, above all, be entertaining.
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