Wilding at ACT: Lingo's Glimmer of Hope or Skin or Light

Photo: Kevin Kauer (killustrate.net)

KT Niehoff's Lingo dance project, after three months of smaller, intimate installations, has reached its apotheosis at ACT (through May 15), with Glimmer of Hope or Skin or Light, one of the more spectacular, unpredictable, and mood-altering performances I've ever been a party to. 

Niehoff says she wanted to break out of the proscenium-stage box, so Glimmer takes place in ACT's Bullitt Cabaret--a few areas for dance are laid out on the main floor, along with a riser for the live band, Ivory in Ice World.

Costumes hang in mid-air, people wander about sipping drinks, a set of seven makeup-masked, male and female "showgirls" in filigreed blue outfits circulate, dance, and spontaneously cry out with laughter (and, in my case, helpfully point out there's a coat rack near the door). 

They're the chorus, and throughout the evening they keep mingling with the audience--or the audience mingles with them. This kind of blurriness is what Niehoff wants and gets.

I don't want to describe too fully what the show presents, as part of its thrill begins the moment you step into the cabaret theater and there are no instructions about where to sit or stand. Suffice to say, if you missed Matthew Barney's Cremaster Cycle at SIFF the other weekend, all is not lost.

The program lists a Lead Showgirl (Kelly Sullivan, in white, with a headress) and a Coven (Bianca Cabrera, Ricki Mason, Michael Rioux, Aaron Swartzman)--all also made-up into otherworldly beings by Ben Delacreme. To a wide range of vocal and instrumental music from Why-have-I-never-heard-of-them-before? Ivory in Ice World (the score is by Jabon aka "Scott Colburn"), the dancers "tell" a story that--if it indeed possesses hope or light--places the emphasis on just a glimmer of it. Cradling a sick or dying body is a recurring theme. 

Most of the dance involves twosomes, though occasionally the Coven becomes four, and the dance techniques are varied. In an early piece, there's plenty of quick footwork up and down a vertical "path," but there's also contact improvisation (creating two-headed hybrid creatures, and evoking gluey, snake-stuck-to-the-floor attachments) and a dance-wrestling bout between Rioux and Swartzman that is as primal as two stags in a forest, but is also an incredibly intricate display--the bump of a hip can be the pivot point for one man lifting the other to fall into the other's grasp.

I don't know what to call Sullivan's work on the stairs except fascinating--she takes her steps in large and small in jerks, forward and back, until I got the impression I was watching something six-legged tackle stairs.

To say it's about desire (lust, dissolution) and power (control, assault) is to graffiti the show with labels when its being is visceral. Even the heavily textured costumes (from Alex Martin and Joanne Witzkowski) cry out to be experienced sensually, from the feathery constructions on the showgirls to the antler-like protrusions from an over-garment on Rioux. Evan Ritter's lighting helps the audience navigate the space, but also shines blinding lights in your eyes and leaves everyone in total darkness, wondering how well they trust the person next to them.

It's wild, in the best way possible.