Packed House at The A.W.A.R.D. Show Just Wanted Some Yuks

As Cosmo Brown reminded us in Singin' in the Rain, the surest way for a performer to win an audience is via laughter. Sang he:

"Now you could study Shakespeare and be quite elite / And you can charm the critics and have nothin' to eat / Just slip on a banana peel the world's at your feet / Make 'em laugh, make 'em laugh, make 'em laugh!"

So it was Thursday night at The A.W.A.R.D. Show, an audience-judged dance competition at On the Boards. The winning group was also the only funny group.

An audience-judged dance competition raises many questions, as Brendan Kiley points out on Slog, but one question we can put to rest is whether such a format appeals to audiences. On the Boards was packed for Thursday night's first round. We even had to do the raise-your-hand-if-you're-next-to-an-empty-seat thing. 

"And Brendan Kiley wrote that arts audiences are down," snarked OtB artistic director Lane Czaplinski from the front of the house. "He did! In the Slog. You should go comment." My female friend leaned over and made a comment: "Brendan Kiley is super cute."

Now I will talk about the four 15-minute dance performances that we saw. Please note that I am not a dance expert. I'm just a regular dude who, during middle school dances, hid in the corner near the donuts. Except when "Buffalo Stance" came on. Then I got FREAKY.

Performance #1 was called "I've Never Been Good at Arranging Flowers," and was written and performed by Ricki Mason. My friend and I both agreed that Mason was the finest dancer of the night, precise and graceful. We also agreed that we didn't have any idea what was going on in her piece. Mason was an androgynous figure in a wife-beater and white briefs. There was a cut-out of a fish involved. Later some video came on of Mason wearing a 20's newsboy outfit. French music played. Whoosh--went right over my head. I assume that this is a failure on my part.

Whim W'Him, photo by Marc von Borstel

Performance #2 was called "Whim W'Him" by Olivier Wevers (check out the shirtless photo on his website; dude would make "The Situation" jealous.) Wevers' piece featured dancers Vincent Lopez and Lucien Postlewaite in black shirts and black utilikilts. It started with both confined to a spotlight. It had the most tension of all the pieces. This piece made me think of the emotional restraint expected of men. And just expectations of men overall. Don't know if it was supposed to do that, but that's what happened.

Performance #3 didn't have a name but was by Coriolis Dance Collective, choreographed by Hannah Lagerway. Two couples; the men in business casual dress, and women in bright colored slips. I didn't get this one at all, but my friend said it was "deeply upsetting." What I'd missed is that the men were all seductive at first, but at the end were controlling the womens' movements. Interestingly, she'd totally missed what I felt was the point of the previous performance. Mars/Venus, right?

Performance #4 began with something new: Laughter from the audience. That struck me as odd, because how many performance events go 45 minutes without a single laugh? We made up for it with the crowd-pleasing "The Hipdeep Family," choreographed by Deborah Wolf. Seven performers danced to the words of Edward Gorey, and then to music accompanying the words of Edward Gorey. They played for laughs, and got them. They got the loudest applause as well, but my friend and I wondered: Is this dance? We agreed that it was more like vaudeville.

After the four performances there's a ten-minute break, then a Q&A with the audience, then you vote on the performance you liked the best. The winning group advances to Sunday's finals, which will be judged jointly by a Panel of Dance Experts and by audience vote. The winning group gets $10K.

I would've voted for group #2, but it was the final, funny group, "The Hipdeep Family," who advanced to the finals.

The A.W.A.R.D. Show continues with performances on Friday and Saturday, with the three finalists competing on Sunday. All shows are at 8 p.m. Tickets!