Emerging from a dark tunnel, a ghostly Victorian house of floating windows and scrim walls awaits us in the center of Z Space’s vast Lisa Steindler stage. The empty ethereal structure, the location of Liss Fain Dance’s latest installation-based dance work “Open Time,” is full of possibilities.
Pre-entry instructions indicate that the black flooring of the unfurnished rooms is reserved for the performers, but the grey areas, which surround the structure and form hallways between rooms are spaces from which we viewers may watch. We are encouraged to move about at will, to take in the dancing from multiple perspectives. Benches and chairs around the edges allow us to perch for a time, but surprisingly most patrons choose to stand, adjusting vantage point easily as they desire.
The compact footprint of the four chambers with their elongated windows and vaulting walls suggest a Victorian claustrophobia, despite their transparency. Lighting and installation designer Matthew Antaky uses an austere black and white pallet with the pale transparent scrim walls interwoven with gauzy waves of the lightest blues and greys cut with sharp black window pane lines. The lighting and costumes are similarly coolly toned. The only warmth in these rooms comes from the fair tones of the four female dancers who enter in a flurry after several minutes in which we have strolled through and around their vacant home.
Liss Fain Dance "Open Time" promotional photo RJ Muna
Dressed in matching silver-grey, spaghetti-strapped, dresses (costume design and construction Mary Domenico), they might be bridesmaids or spirit versions of the same woman. V-necked, low-backed bodices expose much of their upper bodies and create a dichotomy between their feminine fragility and their demonstrated muscle and strength. Their long hair is swept away from their serious faces, but allowed to hang freely in back, whipping through space with each head turn. As they begin to move, one might notice the dresses are actually generously wide-legged pants cut beautifully to allow the fabric to float like a fine gown, while avoiding the awkwardness of exposed undergarments as they twirl or kick.
From the moment they enter, dancers/collaborators Liavanna Maislen, Elena Martins, Katherine Neumann and Isabel Rosenstock command our full attention. Their movement is pressing and vital. The scale of their bodies within the confined spaces, makes them seem larger than life. The bright clear light allows the scrim walls to dissolve; the dancers are at times mere inches away from us.
Initially they each occupy their own rooms, testing its borders with sweeping arms and arcing fan kicks. Rotating rapidly through space, they are urgent seekers. In spite of their divided locations, they dance in unison. Watching each other to stay in tune, they are seemingly unaffected by the obstacle of patrons filling the paths which separate them.
A female voice speaks about the difficulty posed by times of transition, when one must wait for the well of inspiration and purpose to refill. “It seems like an experience of desolation, loss, even a kind of panic.” It is difficult to listen intently to words and watch dance simultaneously, so I catch only snippets. Yet, as it recurs periodically, over the course of the 45-minute dance, I grasp more each time, much as one gains understanding of a problem by turning it repeatedly over in one’s mind. Intrigued, I went searching for the full quote from poet Louise Glück, which I have included below.
Rehearsal photo of Liss Fain Dance "Open Time" at Z Space Installation & Lighting Matthew Antaky photo Dan Wool
The dancers are yearning for something, confounded by its elusiveness. Satisfaction and stillness are fleeting. A smile never emerges. Maislen’s face communicates determination, as she hammers one fist down atop its twin, held steadfastly before herself. Neumann’s neutral affect could be interpreted as trepidation, or acceptance, as she stakes a leg into the ground and expands her long limbs, balancing as a bird frozen in flight.
Dan Wool’s eclectic musical compositions contribute much to the mood and pacing of Open Time. Atmospheric humming yields to a driving pulse, keyboard and string instruments emerge in different sections.
The focus of the dancers’ faces guides us through the performance. Pausing in a crouch, several direct their energy toward a solitary performer, causing us to pivot as well. A series of concurring solos and duets play out in the various spaces. Layers of movement unfold through the sheer walls. Our distinct locations offer each an individual observation experience.
A phantom world of unbound time unfurls, no real progress is made. The quartet doesn’t appear to be moving toward a union, or completion. The company of another dancer fails to provide solace or partnership so much as it compacts the space, limiting physical boundaries as one accommodates the presence of another. Is this a dance about confined spaces, a desperate search for purpose, a striving to refill a reservoir void of options? Suddenly Open Time coalesces, concluding with the voice reflecting on the “necessity to be still sometimes,” as the lights fade too quickly to black. As I was across the stage, I didn’t properly catch the final tableau of all the women together, finally paused. Was there relief in acceptance?
Liss Fain’s program note speaks of the installation amplifying solitude, separateness, and community. These are not words that I attach easily to the experience of watching Open Time. Rather a longing for and suffering related to absence of solitude, or mental peace, emerges as dancers lunge deeply forward, their heads gripped within taloned hands. What comes through strongly is the dancers’ beautiful craft. Racing from start to finish with assurance and grace, they embody fervent defiant heroines.
Review by Jen Norris, published September 29, 2024
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Louise Glück from the Paris Review Issue 246, Winter 2023“I don’t think I write through transition periods. What happens to me is that something stops, something ends, something is brought to a closure. Then I have nothing—I’ve used up whatever it is that I had and must wait for the well to fill up again. That’s what you tell yourself, but it doesn’t feel like a sanguine experience of sitting quietly while the well fills up. It seems like an experience of desolation, loss, even a kind of panic. The thing you would wish to be doing, you can’t do. I’ve been through a lot of those periods, and what seems to happen, or what has happened in the past, is that after a year or two, or whatever the duration, another sound emerges—and it really is another sound. It’s another way of thinking about a poem or making a poem, a different kind of speech to use, from the Delphic to the demotic. Suddenly I’ll hear a line—you can’t hear this yourself when I read, because my voice tends to pasteurize everything—suddenly I’ll realize that I’m being sent some sort of message, a new path, and I try it on. That’s how things change for me—it’s never that I work my way through it. I have friends, great poets, who seem to make extraordinary use of a daily ritualized writing practice, but for me that doesn’t work at all.”
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Program Credits:
Liss Fain Dance and Z Space co-present
OPEN TIME
A performance installation
Choreography: Liss Fain
Dancers/Collaborators: Liavanna Maislen, Elena Martins, Katherine Neumann, Isabel Rosenstock
Music: Dan Wool
Installation and Lighting Design: Matthew Antaky
Actor: Florentina Mocanu
Text Louise: Glück, excerpts from an interview in The Paris Review (winter 2023), and Song (Winter Recipes from the Collective)
Costume Design: Mary Domenico
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