Argentine choreographer Diana Szeinblum’s new work Alaska is a raw and unapologetic piece of dance-theater that simultaneously inspires mystery, hope and a worrisome sense of helplessness (think of the voyeuristic discomfort of seeing Gena Rowlands’ unraveling in Cassavetes’ A Woman Under the Influence). “Gloriously alive,” Alaska marks the choreographer’s first visit since her 2003 Secreto y Malibu, a fantastically arch piece that seemed one part Buñuelian tease, one part a nod to Peter Jackson’s Heavenly Creatures.
Trained in the tanztheater weltanschauung of Wuppertal’s Pina Bausch, Szeinblum is a cunning synthesist who avoids the trappings of overly mannered and emotive, Ach-Ich-Bin-So-Unglücklich-und-Existenzial costume/set-driven Ausdrucktanz–instead mining a dance dialectic of frenzied releases and collapsed resignation. Rigorous dance, athletic and precise, yet unafraid of small inward gestures, Alaska, “speaks of that place that we all recognize, but where no one has ever been.” Like Glenn Gould’s “idea of North,” “Alaska,” remains (in the words of Gould), “a convenient place to dream about, spin tall tales about, and, in the end, avoid.”
Danced by two women and two men to an original, tensely cinematic score, the evening-length work charts the terra incognitae of bodies rising and falling apart, stolen snapshots exposing intimacy, dominance, and obsession. From the comedic to the cathartic, the piece is brutal and fiercely seductive. Szeinblum successfully exploits many of Bausch’s hallmark devices—angst, alienation, frailty of human connection, the blurring and loss of self—and tempers them with her own wickedly dark humor, extremes of movement (from the pedestrian, workaday to mechanized, operatic violence), a minimalist/conceptual mise-en-scène, and shards of hope producing a pandemonium of “interior spaces,” disturbing little lonelinesses. Some of the best unsettling movement poetry you’ll see this season.
PICA presents Alaska at PSU’s Lincoln Hall, 1620 SW Park Avenue, on Tuesday and Wednesday, January 29 & 30, 8 pm. $25 ($20 PICA members). Tickets: (503)242-1419
Tags: art, contemporary dance, dance, pica