Beautiful Oddities

Saw this tonight. Inbal Pinto & Avshalom Pollack Dance Company's OYSTER, a 1999 piece that finally made it to the American Dance Festival. In that link is a little bit about the company, who is from Israel, and a video clip from the piece. Watch it.

I am still grasping for the words to describe this most breath-taking piece. As much as I pride myself in being a writer, I really must steal the words from the description in the link above because it comes the closest to doing it justice:

"... from human marionettes to double-headed men and armless odditities, reality is thrown out the window in this most engaging evening that blurs the lines between ballet, acrobatics, mime, and theater ... it's a fantastical feast."

The piece is based on short story by the always brilliant Tim Burton, which was an automatic turn on for me (Big Fish is one of my favorite movies, and who doesn't love Edward Scissorhands?). The short story, after a bit of internet surfing, I think is "The Meloncholy Death of Oyster Boy" and probably too the other stories that are in the short-story/poem book of the same name.

As soon as the curtain opened, I was transcended into a world much like the one described above--a weird dream of a circus and ballerinas and sights that were fantastical indeed. And honestly, I'm not even sure what happened in between. I had floated above myself and landed in this bright yet gloomy, questionable space where nothing at all was predictable. The music moved from vaudeville-like instrumentals to tracks with vibrant, sometimes even croaky singing in a language I could not identify. The soundtrack went from loose, improvisational-like solos to drum beats like a fist punching into a pillow. The people (or creatures) I saw on stage were characters who I could not tell if they were my friends or my enemies, if they knew I was there or if I was invisible to them.

When it was over, I could not even move. I didn't even notice the curtain was closing until that last sliver of light was about to disappear. The auditorium filled with the sound of applause but I couldn't even get my limbs to move. I could barely find my feet to stand up and give them a standing ovation (though, what I thought they really deserved, was a floating ovation). I found I had transcended into this fantasy-like dream world circus thing, a world full of odd things that were beautiful and beautiful things that were odd.

Odd and beautiful, beautiful and odd. I think I am discovering that things in the world that are both are the best things.

Even now, an hour after this performance, I still feel like I am floating, not landed back in the real world with my feet planted solidly beneath me. My chest has loosened a bit from the tightness that pulled at me as the lights came up, and the vibrations I felt beneath my skin all over have slowed down, back in time with a steady heartbeat.

ADF asks us this season, "What is Dance Theater?" Well, folks, THAT was a great example of what dance theater could be. Not just because Inbal Pinto & Avshalom Pollack, married partners in crime and the brains behind the company, are one-part theater master (Pollack is a very experienced actor) and one-part big time dancer and choreographer (Pinto danced with Batsheva, a well-known Israeli contemporary dance company, and won a "Bessie" award for her choreography), but that definitely helped. OYSTER, though, says it all.

I can't wait to go to sleep to see what kinds of beautiful and odd things decide to tumble, glide, leap, and fall into my dreams tonight.