Ripple Effect (漣漪效應), 8213 Physical Dance Theatre’s (8213 肢體舞蹈劇場) newest work, wasn’t as loud as I had expected at Saturday’s matinee at the Experimental Theater — apparently the volume was turned down after earlier audiences had complained — but its buzzy, industrial-tech soundscape enveloped without ever being obvious or over the top. It just was.
Just as Sun Chuo-tai’s (孫梲泰) choreography just was. Nothing super spectacular — deceptively simple, really, but all the elements combined for a powerful performance. So what if a dancer could stand motionless with his right leg held perpendicular to his body, his foot almost to shoulder level, for a few minutes? Big deal, let’s move on and concentrate on the small motions. The devil is in the details after all.
Sometimes I had to look really hard to see what was moving — the twitching of the fingers of one hand, the flex of a shoulder, the almost imperceptible shaking of one leg — before these movements grew into major tremor. The isolationist exercises that break down each body part turned that part into a separate performance vehicle and led the outward flow of one movement from one dancer to the next.
Sun tried to use pure energy and force to examine the impact that people have on others — through combinations of solos, duets, trios and group pieces — to show how ambitions and actions flow outward from us, creating ripples in relationships and society. Perhaps the most shocking ripple was created toward the end, when Chen Yu-jen (陳囿任) reached out and lightly touched his hand to Casey Avaunt’s cheek, which led to a series of hands to faces or hands to shoulders with all the dancers. The delicacy of the movement was a shock since with Sun’s work it’s more common to see dancers pushing and shoving one another.
The performers were all great, even though they’re not all trained dancers. Avaunt, Chen, Hsueh Hsin-yi (薛欣宜), Chiu Po-chang (邱柏昶) and Liu Yen-meng (劉彥萌) have varied backgrounds, including training in classical, contemporary dance and street dance as well as Beijing opera, gymnastics and martial arts.
Of course, the fact that the dancers were wearing yellow jumpsuits, which looked almost like neoprene, meant that even the slightest movement was sure to work up lots of sweat. Before the performance, Avaunt told me that the outfits were a lot more breathable than the scuba suits the company wore in last year’s Electron.
The costumes were the one downside to Ripple Effect. They were cartoonish, looking like a cross between a bad science-fiction movie of the 1950s and a Japanese cartoon superhero, with a bit of Thierry Mugler thrown in, and proved a lot more distracting than the platform the performers were dancing on, which was illuminated by flashing LED lights.
My only complaint about Ripple Effect was that it was too short — just an hour. I’d would have liked to see more, although I’m not sure the dancers would agree.
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