Dance Review: LIGHTLAB 9 at The Space Upstairs
A few years ago, local artists, David Bernabo and Taylor Knight, created the LightLab Performance Series in an effort to give voice to the experimental movement. Bernabo’s background is largely in music and visual art, while Knight received a degree in dance from Point Park University. Their styles and interests mesh, though. Bernabo developed his own untrained movement style over the years. And Knight solidified a reputation as a musician under the moniker, slowdanger, with his partner, Anna Thompson.
LightLab shows are often stripped down and low-key, without major lighting or costuming. The works happen in site-specific locations, most locally, but some out of town. Friday night, The Space Upstairs in Point Breeze (home to The Pillow Project) hosted the 9th event. In addition to the featured performance, five-minute slots were filled with other dancers, musicians, and writers in an open-mic fashion.
Connor Hestdalen, a poet with Persian Pittsburgh, collaborated with ukulele player, Jeremy Mikush, in a short reading and musical improvisation. Roberto Guido also shared poetry, humorous and poignant with a feminist perspective. Hannah Barnard performed a movement improvisation alongside Flux (Darnell Weaver) on live viola; the two communicated with artistic grace.
Jean-Paul Weaver also danced, moving lightly with his signature long lines and ethereal quality. Bernabo performed a short piece that had a running motif. He used various objects, like bells and containers of grains, to create contagious and uplifting rhythms. Shiloh Hodges impressed the audience with seamless fluidity and a candor about her performance.
The featured work was choreographed by S+Vois (Shantelle Jackson) from New York City. Knight and Thompson met Jackson years ago when she danced in Pittsburgh, and have stayed connected ever since. The three of them performed at Dixon Place this past spring and discussed a possible Pittsburgh show then.
Acts was the result, a 3-section group piece shown intermittently throughout the evening. These snippets were choreographed in a short, four-day residency and included Jackson, Thompson, Knight, Hodges, Flux, and Morgan Hawkins.
The work was dark, both literally and figuratively. The performers wore all black and danced under low light. S+Vois entered first. She moved toward the audience in a stumbling way, her boots weaving a pattern of heavy footfall. The rest of the cast crept in behind her in an equally eerie walk forward. They encircled S+Vois and helped ease her fall to the floor. From hands and knees, the performers eventually rose up, creature-like, and lightly stomped their feet as the lights faded.
In the next section, four performers faced the back wall, shaking and gasping in a startling, yet moving moment. They eventually moved as a clump, collapsing in on on each other with struggle. This led into a beautiful unison floor phrase that continued as a solo by Hodges. The section lent itself to the description S+Vois provided of the work – “…an experiment in undoing duality, an opening of space and an allowing of self-riddance.” The somewhat volatile nature of the opening contrasted the expansiveness of the ending.
In the final section, Thompson danced a solo of simple and clear shapes. Her arabesque crumbled then morphed, sleepily. She accompanied herself by singing about the malleability of memory. Knight then joined her. The two shared weight in sparse partnering phrases that showed their interdependency.
A quartet of wavy arm gestures followed. The dancers then pressed seamlessly into handstands that melted into the floor. Flux entered, playing the viola. Individual solos crescendoed with his music. The dancers left the stage while Flux continued to play, and the lights went out.
Acts worked well as vignettes, but would also succeed as a fully developed show of its own. S+Vois’s choices were certainly compelling, and worthy of more material. LightLab continues to be a vehicle for noteworthy artists.
Correction: The piece near the end of the review, with Taylor Knight and Anna Thompson, was their own choreography, not S+Vois’s choreography.