Weekend Performance: Azeotrope, Ayudapii, Other Made-up Words & Twyla

PB_TMOG’s “Ayudapii: The Primitive (The Evolution of Need: Phase 1)”. Photo by Tim Summers

First up in this week’s listings is Paige Barnes and Christopher Hydinger’s Ayudapii: The Primitive (The Evolution of Need: Phase One) at Open Flight Studio (tickets $6-$14). That’s a hell of a name, and the website’s description can be equally oblique, but then again, this is dance: it’s a physical language that doesn’t lend itself so well to verbal description, making me think that the old phrase would be more appropriate if restated as: “Writing about dance is like music about architecture.” Except that actually sounds pretty cool, and I think it’s been done, thus disproving the sentiment. But whatever. I digress.

If you want my sales pitch for why you should head to the U-District for this show, which runs for only two weekends, it’s that dancer/choreographer Paige Barnes is working with some fascinating elements here and the result is really interesting. First of all, the name “ayudapii” is a word she made up to describe the movement style she’s employing, which relies on an intense relationship with the floor and the space just above it. Now, that may sound sort of academic, but trust me: in execution, creating dynamic movement in such a small space is actually remarkable, particularly when you account for the fact that it’s not particularly easy to move on or near the ground. I’ve seen some video of this and it’s impressive.

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Partially that’s owed to Barnes’ company of dancers, which include a few of the people I frequently describe as dancers “whose work I’ve liked” or as “one of my favorite performers in town,” but there’s a reason for that, and Alice Gosti, Allie Hankins, and Monica Mata Gilliam all fit the bill. Finally, Hydinger (who performs as “The Music of Grayface”) provides a haunting score, and the piece is visually stunning.

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Otherwise, in the world of theatre, Ghost Light Theatricals, one of Seattle’s little theatres that could, is opening up their production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Ballard Underground (tickets $12-$15). Now, Ghost Light is actually one of these companies that have consistently impressed me over the years (their all female The Beaux’ Strategem from ’08 really has stuck with me), with clever and innovative approaches to the classics. So this may well be another Shakespeare worth seeing. Though of course they’ve got stiff competition with Seattle Shakes’ Hamlet, which we’ve already declared to be the stuff of Seattle theatre legend.

Otherwise, NW Dance Syndrome is presenting a mixed evening of work from various choreographers called Collide over at the Erickson Theatre Off Broadway (tickets $15-$18), Velocity Dance Center and Daipan are presenting a weekend of butoh (tickets $15-$35), and then there’s Azeotrope’s Red Light Winter, which is getting rave reviews (tickets $15).

And last, but by no means least, this is the big opening weekend of PNB’s All Tharp celebration of choreographer Twyla Tharp (tickets $27-$125). Probably you know who I’m talking about. If you don’t, well, skip ahead to minute three of the video so Robin Williams can give an ad hoc introduction to the history of Modern Dance.