Dance review: TWObigsteps Collective's final double bill captures the ephemeral emotions of this suspended time
Two people connect across a socially distanced void, while another renegotiates relationship to the past
Sarah Wong and Sophie Mueller-Langer in Katie Cassady’s II. Photo by Susanna Barlow
THROUGH PURE, UNFILTERED feeling more than any literal content, the Departure double bill captured something intangible about the ephemeral and reflective states of these pandemic times.
Notable for its stripped-down approach and lack of pretension, the contemporary-dance double bill marked the final production by the TWObigsteps Collective, disbanding as its members look to new pursuits. The show was livestreamed over the weekend from the Dance Centre.
The opening piece, Katie Cassady’s II, featured two performers—Sarah Wong and Sophie Mueller-Langer—mirroring and responding to each other, connecting and interrelating across a void on the stage. Watching them, you couldn’t help but see it as a metaphor for how we’re all trying to maintain relationships amid social distancing. But there’s also a dreamlike feel to the choreography’s rhythms—the way it pauses, holds a gesture in suspension, then releases, that speaks to the extended sense of unreality right now.
The mood is heightened by the fact the repeated motif of the women reaching and extending, and then pulling in on themselves, as if trying to close a gap between them.
The piece is full of loose yet innovative movement language; at one point Mueller-Langer spins on her stomach, propelling herself in circles on the floor; at another, the pair pulls the invisible from the air and pushes it in their mouths—taking words back? Swallowing their feelings? And there’s a great freedom in the middle section, where H. Takahashi and Stefan Nazarevich’s electro score turns from haunting delirium to a danceclub beat, and the two performers let loose.
Marissa Wong’s solo for herself, Departure, plumbs darker and more cathartic territory.
Marissa Wong in Departure. Photo by Belen Garcia
Featuring a pile of her old clothes at stage right, which later connected as a sort of web she donned and trailed around, the piece was about the way we carry memories and experiences, the way they shape us, and ultimately, the way we can break free from their control.
Performed within an improvised structure, it dug at emotions that felt startlingly raw and authentic. A hallucinatory electro score was punctuated by voiceovers of people from Wong’s past announcing consecutive, numbered “levels”—presumably, turning points in her life.
Some of the moments were painful and suggested trauma, her arms and hands extending to push away, or her knees and elbows bending and pivoting restlessly; at others, you could see her straining to conform, most literally in a section that used ballet technique and clearly referenced that rigid part of her past training.
Throughout, her relationship to the pile of clothing—literal manifestations of her past—shifted. Sometimes she seemed afraid of it, or stepped tentatively over it, or bent down to bury her head in it.
Departure felt risky, real, intimate, and relatable--at a time that has forced all of us into reflection about our relationship with our past. It's an artistic and personal leap that bodes well for Wong's next venture, as artistic director of the aptly named new The Falling Company.
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