The appeal of three new works from Olivier Wever’s Whim W’Him dance group filled the Intiman Theatre on a night when thawing piles of slush in Seattle streets mounted to your knees. Boots were not strictly a fashion choice. “Cast the First Rock in Twenty Twelve” came with plenty of heat of its own, though.
Two shorter works, La Langue de l’amour and Flower Festival, led up to the night’s major showcase, thrOwn, but that’s not to say they weren’t as appreciatively received. If you’re at the theatre as a couple, you have to be careful how loudly you clap for the wickedly titled La Langue de l’amour, in case your partner takes it as a passive-aggressive hint of some kind.
A solo en pointe tease by Chalnessa Eames in a deranged-pixie wig, Langue employs pantomime and, in this context, the not-so-sublimated eroticism of the allegro movement of a Domenico Scarlatti harpsichord sonata as Wevers wrings every glistening drop of sex appeal out of the ballerina’s formal precision (a gauzy wisp of costume by Christine Joly de Lotbinière aids in that effort). Typically, ballet avoids conjuring up the illicit awe inspired when Eames bends and looks back through her legs at the audience. Through charade, she makes a pretty determined, detailed proposition of delights—Oh my, whipped cream?—in the offing if the object of desire (a spotlight picked out someone in the audience) calls her. Later, after thrOwn, it will seem impressive that the same person danced in both.
After Wevers’ reinterpreted Flower Festival, though, people rocketed from their seats to applaud. All the words to describe what Wevers has done here must be French and alive to shades of nuance; Bournonville’s perky-footed peasant courtship gives way to two men in suits (Andrew Bartee and Lucien Postlewaite in Mark Zappone’s sharp-looking costumes) who engage in a kind of dominance display. The suits in turn give way to workout shorts as the men, getting serious, bring their A-game.
If you don’t know the Bournonville, no worries, you know the office or gym politics that are relevant. If you do, Wevers’ choreography for neckties—instead of ribbons—is a treat (at one point, Postlewaite draws his necktie across the back of his neck like a bow, in time with the strings in Edvard Helsted’s music). Bartee’s bright pink socks, contrasting with Postlewaite’s Ben-Stiller-like flexing, seem to draw a mischievous-macho axis between the two, accounting for steadily growing misapprehension, as Bartee’s advances, sometimes by petit pas, results in him being dragged, by the scruff of his jacket, back to his chair.
That’s all if you choose to account for the psychodrama somehow, of course—Wevers fills your eyes with invention enough that you can simply take in the dance instead. Where in ballet, arms might bow to create an O of entry, here suit jackets are shrugged out of until the sleeves, so there is a physically bounded circle to step into or through. Postlewaite threads his arm between Bartee’s back and his jacket, twisting it—and making Bartee revolve—as if it’s a wind-up mechanism. The comedy never finishes, Wevers suggests, but there’s emotion, too: thin, angular Bartee, extending a leg behind himself, drapes his arms backwards, as well, wrists bent downward—he’s like the prow of a ship, open to whatever comes.
And then there’s thrOwn. The program notes by Victoria Farr Brown explain to you that thrOwn uses the imagery of public stoning to explore “righteous cruelty,” and complicity (ushers hand out stones for you to hold onto before the dance starts). The result is at times eerie, gorgeous, and disjunctive, featuring strapped costumes and full-length flasher’scoat/judge’s robes from de Lotbinière, a swirling desert of floor and backdrop from artist Steve Jensen, and lighting both stark and caressing from Michael Mazzola.
It opens with a wedding, a woman (Chalnessa Eames) marrying a man (Andrew Bartee), in an arranged marriage, if you take the firmness of Tory Peil’s grasp on both as evidence of something. As they’re proceeding off, hand in hand, the bond is broken by a lover (Lucien Postlewaite, looking every inch the dark, handsome stranger), who sweeps Eames away in a passionate embrace. Wevers’ choreography is suggestive and indirect here, implying Eames’ shy passion with a foot sneaking up to stroke the length of a calf. Postlewaite carries Eames, taut, horizontal, like an instrument to be sounded.
Some of Wevers’ most striking choreography comes from the ambivalence with which he freights a romantic pas de deux, and from the willingness of his dancers to act that out—Postlewaite and Eames twine limbs as if their bones were pickled. But at what I registered as the climax of their lovemaking, the actual contact you see is back to back, not face to face. (“Don’t indulge,” instructed Wevers in rehearsal, about this moment.) And both Eames and Peil dance with their hair down, veiling their faces.
The affair discovered, the woman is jailed in a barred box of light, and Wevers’ post-modernly zooms out to America, our cowboy love affair with guns, and history of capital punishments, including hangings. The long coats are now dusters, and imaginary 10-gallon hats are doffed, all executions performed as brightly as if Oklahoma! had gone noir. This jaunt to the political from the personal was jarring, and I wondered at first if it worked, even though I understood Wevers’ intent.
In her cell, Eames has only her memory-fantasy of her affair; she’s rejoined by Postlewaite, and imagines running away in a spasm of wild freedom, but Postlewaite and Jim Kent, Peil, and Bartee, will soon embody her floggers and killers. Wevers has the dancers play multiple roles without necessarily specifying when a transition occurs, so that you feel jarred by the fact that Peil, who was just drawing her brow tenderly, sorrowfully along the back of Eames’ shoulders, is now whipping her coat to the floor with a crack to suggest Eames’ beating.
A post-stoning coda formally responded to that middle, “America,” section in a way that integrated what felt initially like a detour. You see the ensemble erupt, Eames covered in rocks, as if both celebrating an accomplishment and trying to shake off responsibility for it, and you realize that however the costumes for this drama may vary, in the end, it’s because the righteous participants hope not to be recognized. Still, I can’t help thinking that Wevers has tried to encompass too much in too short a time–if you don’t pay special attention to the program notes, I think you’d be hard-pressed to follow the jump-cut storyline, and I remain unsure of how to praise Jim Kent’s precise, fluid dancing in that I was never sure who he was supposed to be.
