Whim W'Him and the Politics of Dancing

In rehearsal, Annabelle Lopez Ochoa, Lucien Postlewaite, Olivier Wevers

It's hard to imagine a more Seattle-sounding dance bill than Whim W'Him's "Shadows, Raincoats & Monsters" (through Jan. 16 at Intiman Theatre), which is perhaps why tonight's show is sold out too. You might still be able to pick up tickets for the 5 p.m. Sunday show, if you hurry.

Whim W'Him is the company founded by PNB's Olivier Wevers, and to date, the words most used to describe them are on the order of "vibrant," "intense," and "splashy." In the program notes, Wevers says, "My pieces in this program may appear to have a darker feel to them than my past work," and that's certainly true of his three-part "Monster," which peers into scenes of repression and alienation, addiction, and codependency. (Really, all catnip for the Seattle arts community, let's be honest.)

Yet, the Wevers balls-of-the-feet buoyancy and self-assuredness are very much in evidence, along with a sure-handedness in creating dance that means to communicate clearly. In a City Arts interview, guest dancer Melody Herrera commented on that aspect:

I think sometimes when works are abstract that people can take away a lot of different meanings, which is good, and that will happen with this one too, but I think it will be clear to every single person watching what emotion and what thought and what the feeling of the piece is. 

Wevers has a forthright, more European perhaps, sense of engagement than you might expect from a hip, young dance company that features beautiful people, sharply dressed. His "3Seasons" gave you a rape of Mother Earth, and "Monster" deals in part with prejudice against homosexual love, sturdily turning disgust and approbation on itself, as it examines the way society can warp people's love. He's not making an argument, so much as telling you what he thinks, take it or leave it. 

If Wevers' interests as choreographer extend beyond the boundaries of dance for art's sake, and into environmental and social issues, he's also establishing himself as a gesamtkunstwerk creative director, taking into consideration the possibilities of the theatrical experience.

So it is with "Raincoats," which opens by foregrounding the sound of the dancer's feet as they march in a little raincoat regiment about the space, with their dark vinyl rain ponchos' dj-scratches as punctuation. Wevers says it's a riff on Rene Magritte--the raincoats are not really raincoats, but something to hide your true colors beneath. Muddy shadows vanish, replaced by static, stark shafts of light (courtesy of Michael Mazzola) that the dancers move within, except for two, Ty Alexander Cheng and Chalnessa Eames, who were dubious about their raincoats from the beginning, and once rid of them, discover a childlike burst of joy and freedom that is reflected in the music by Jad Abumrad as they curlicue across the stage. Wevers uses sock-footed sliding and gliding to various effect; here, there's almost a childhood ice skating rink summoned into being.

I'd earlier seen a preview of the first part of "Monster," and this felt more distilled to its essence. Andrew Bartee and Vincent Michael Lopez (in red socks and shorts) are a couple trying to be a couple--as an introductory poem by RA Scion puts it, "If not my lover / Whom then, shall I love?"--but Wevers interjects a hand sliding over a face like a mask. It matters, of course, that the hand of homophobia is also the hand of a partner, how concern for what society sees infiltrates even private moments, and disrupts something as simple as looking into a lover's eyes. Then, not facing each other, the two crouch and crab through a pas de deux, tenderness and stress alternating in holds and tugs at each other. 

The addiction sequence, featuring Cheng and Kylie Lewallen, found Wevers in a Donald Byrd frame of mind, interpolating a little drug-mime: Did they just snort coke off the stage? Yes, they did! They're seated in a corner of the stage, slapping veins, pushing and pulling at each other as if they're (in)action figures, rolling a body beneath legs with knees arched. Occasionally one will strike out across the stage, but they're arrested by the protestations or dead weight of their partner. In one way, this is the most striking of the Wevers pieces, as it goes against the grain of his movement idiom. That energizing flame you sense in much of his choreography is almost extinguished here, the dancers close to being so much unintelligible meat.

The final part spotlights the kind of relationship that feeds on a couple, rather than feeding them. It's Melody Herrera and Lucien Postlewaite in a more familiar kind of pas de deux, though balletic expression (Herrera's leaps into Postlewaite's arms) is leavened with a wrenchingly real body language, as Herrera fastens on Postlewaite like a starfish, then stands shoulders drooping. The dance itself is series of little explosions, combustions of attraction or separation; one partner leaves, fed up, or flies back to the other. I believe the music is by Ludovico Enaudi, and it's piercing jabs on strings and shuffling melancholy. As with the dancers in the whole series, the acting from Herrera and Postlewaite is minutely observed, fraught, electric.

Rehearsal shot of "Cylindrical Shadows"

The evening closes with "Cylindrical Shadows" by Annabelle Ochoa Lopez, who actually attended the same school as Wevers in Belgium. It's a beautifully sad or sadly beautiful piece, which grew out of her hearing the news that a colleague and friend had died, out of the blue, at 33. There's a visual trope she returns to in the work, where one dancer sits in thought on the body of another, that may capture for all time the truth of contemplative grief. It's both a bit of a shock to see someone sitting on a dead body, but also an organic illustration of how a death can be the basis for, and grow into, our thoughts and remembrance. Her work comes in a few different scenes, which all reverberate with a transformation. It opens with the troupe (Bartee, Eames, Herrera, Lopez, Postlewaite, Wevers) standing tree-like in place, with all the movement in their arms and hands; occasionally they sweep their arms to the side and shake, as if trying to release something. In another scene, Bartee, Postlewaite, and Wevers form a thicket of angled legs and arms, as Lopez tries to poke his head through. Then Herrera and Postlewaite have a swooning, lyric culmination (to Purcell's "Dido's Lament") that will have you heaving a huge sigh, shot through as it is with gusts of intimacy and affection that sway and splay the dancers' bodies.