PNB, Emergence (review)
Apr. 21st, 2018 11:10 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elfsLast night, Omaha and I went to the Pacific Northwest Ballet. It's a little weird, I guess, to be talking abouth the ballet; it seems a bit pretentious, and the tickets aren't cheap, and everyone who's there looks far more wealthy and comfortable than the people I ride the train with. But last night was Crystal Pite's Emergence, which has moved into being one of my favorite ballets.
Emergence is a story about a human insect hive. The opening piece shows a new worker emerging from her chrysalis, and the way the ballerina twitches and shudders is definitely creepy, even as another worker slowly helps her figure out how her body works. During the transformation, she takes poses and positions that are just not natural, at the limits of human mobility, and look defiantly weird.
One movement has the women of the hive in what looks like a traditional chorus line, but then they begin chanting weirdly as they slowly and aggressively sweep the stage clean of men. The traditional long-legginess of a chorus line becomes weaponized, like the prow of a harvesting machine.
In another movement, a procession of males makes a slow walking step across the stage, taking odd turns at precise moments, until the last four realize that one among them isn't male. The woman chosen for the role is atypically strong and convincingly butch, and the men dance with her in a way that shows an attempt to accept her in their role— she even does a lift of the smallest of the men— even as they struggle with knowing what she really is. The movement ends with the rest of the hive showing up, and the four of them fleeing.
The piece ends with the males lying on the floor as the light rises, face-down, their arms twitching upward behind them in a cyclic rhythm which is downright uncanny. They rise, and the women join them, and the hive slowly emerges into a full-on discipline rhythm become a solid, unified mass of creatures all moving as one, until one breaks off and makes his way down the tunnel at the back of the stage setting, to leave the hive.
It's transhuman and post-furry, and definitely weird. It takes these people whose whole life has been learning how to be fluid and elegant on stage, and makes them learn these weird, twitchy gestures and sharp, harsh movements, using their physical talents at the exterme of their abilities to give impressions that are uncanny and inhuman.
Emergence is a story about a human insect hive. The opening piece shows a new worker emerging from her chrysalis, and the way the ballerina twitches and shudders is definitely creepy, even as another worker slowly helps her figure out how her body works. During the transformation, she takes poses and positions that are just not natural, at the limits of human mobility, and look defiantly weird.
One movement has the women of the hive in what looks like a traditional chorus line, but then they begin chanting weirdly as they slowly and aggressively sweep the stage clean of men. The traditional long-legginess of a chorus line becomes weaponized, like the prow of a harvesting machine.
In another movement, a procession of males makes a slow walking step across the stage, taking odd turns at precise moments, until the last four realize that one among them isn't male. The woman chosen for the role is atypically strong and convincingly butch, and the men dance with her in a way that shows an attempt to accept her in their role— she even does a lift of the smallest of the men— even as they struggle with knowing what she really is. The movement ends with the rest of the hive showing up, and the four of them fleeing.
The piece ends with the males lying on the floor as the light rises, face-down, their arms twitching upward behind them in a cyclic rhythm which is downright uncanny. They rise, and the women join them, and the hive slowly emerges into a full-on discipline rhythm become a solid, unified mass of creatures all moving as one, until one breaks off and makes his way down the tunnel at the back of the stage setting, to leave the hive.
It's transhuman and post-furry, and definitely weird. It takes these people whose whole life has been learning how to be fluid and elegant on stage, and makes them learn these weird, twitchy gestures and sharp, harsh movements, using their physical talents at the exterme of their abilities to give impressions that are uncanny and inhuman.
