Fade Dis/Appearances with Crispin Spaeth Dance Group Dance Performance for 5 Dancers
50:00
2005


Performance History

Consolodated Works, Seattle WA, March 18 - April 2, 2005


Description

 Fade is a lush and layered exploration of the moment vision falters: a tumble forward through time, a ravishing ode to liminality, when things are not what they were, but not yet what they are becoming. Featuring a talented cast of young collaborators and the powerful vision of CSDG, Fade is a vibrant mix of movement, color, light and sound – from a company whose work was touted as “ineffably bracing and smart” by Seattle’s alternative weekly, The Stranger.

Framed by a stunning visual environment, the dancers begin on a stage covered in black visquine, lonely survivors on a dark and crackling sea. As the black floor recedes, it reinvents the stage-scape, revealing a sharp and elegant white square — a boxing ring, an arena, a blank canvas -- which is mirrored by a luminescent vertical backdrop. This simple and breathtaking transformation sets in motion a chain of shifting events. Heroes are made, tragedies survived and intimate secrets play out as the dancers constantly test the limits of their changing circumstances, embracing big, off-balance movement, muscled, passionate partnering, and delicate time-altering solo work.

Through a brutal game of Marco Polo, a highly flirtatious meditation on social dancing, and a thoroughly blind solo, “childlike games are subverted by a strictly adult sort of play.” (Brangien Davis, Seattle Times) The final image, a red neon OPEN sign interrupts the show, deleting the stage image, on, off, no fade, the end, and underscores the refreshing lack of sentimentality in this work. Performed by a troupe with a wide range of character and relationship to gender, FADE is intelligent, sexy and uncompromisingly modern in its vision -- an alchemy of the collaborative forms in which dancing is central, even as it pushes at the defining edges of performance and visual art.

Production Credits:
Choreographer/Director: Crispin Spaeth
Scene Designer: Etta Lilienthal
Composer: Yann Novak
Light Designer/Production Manager: Jon Harmon
Costume Designers: Rigmor Vohra and Kristina Olsen
Performers: Heather Budd, Yuki Enomoto, Kathy Lawson, Chay Norton, and Julia Skloot


Reviews

In her newest work, Fade, choreographer Crispin Spaeth may have come closer to her goal than she really wanted. Her description talks about an "exploration of the moment that vision falters, when light gives way to dark," and for all the intriguing performance happening onstage, we get the feeling that the real dance might actually be going on somewhere else, beyond our peripheral vision.

From the opening tableau, with the dancers lying on a black plastic tarp that covers the floor and reflects the stage light into our eyes, we are unsure of what we're seeing: how many people there are, where they're going, what they might be doing, and why they are there. After the lights come up further and the tarp is pulled back to reveal a crisp white square of dancing space, there are plenty of other references to impaired vision. Fade includes a vicious game of blindman's bluff, a set of swooning backward falls, and a long sequence where one of the performers seems to be dancing with her eyes closed. Even when we can see them, the dancers might not be able to see each other.

Spaeth has surrounded herself with some gifted collaborators. Etta Lilienthal designed a handsome stage space— that shimmering white square on the floor and a backdrop of heavy plastic sheeting that either reflects light or acts as a translucent window on the action happening behind. Rigmor Vohra and Kristina Olsen have made some very danceable costumes, and lighting designer Jon Harmon contributes some deceptively simple effects, the light levels hovering at that place where we begin to doubt our eyes. Yann Novak's soundtrack underscores the action rather than leading it; the rustle of plastic at the opening echoes in his gentle static.

Despite all these elements, though, and the committed dancing of the cast—Heather Budd, Yuki Enomoto, Kathy Lawson, Chay Norton, and Julia Skloot—there is a curious indeterminacy to the piece. This could be a part of Spaeth's plan, and it would be tempting to read more into the work than might actually be there, but the overall structure of the evening is unclear. It doesn't reflect either the natural chaos of random ordering, where you surrender your own options to the roll of the dice, or the more obvious traditional composition, moving us briskly from introduction through development and conclusion. Fade hovers somewhere in between, and by staying in that middle place, Spaeth loses a number of choreographic tools that could highlight aspects of the work and give the audience a few more clues about this world and these people.

Even in works made with significant creative input from performers and collaborators, you can usually feel the hand of the choreographer in the final choices—what they've picked and the order they've put it in. That stamp wasn't easy to see in this work. At just under an hour, the dance needs to make its points faster, or we'll miss them. In past works, Spaeth has seemed to manage tasks like this easily, which makes the weakness in this piece even more curious. Although there are moments of clarity, intention, and energy in Fade, the whole feels like less than the sum of its parts. When a neon "Open" sign flashes on to signal the end of the work and artificial illumination takes the place of waning daylight, the audience blinks, wondering what it was they were actually watching.
– Sandra Kurtz (Through a Dance, Darkly, The Seattle Weekly)


Just one word: Plastics. It's perhaps the best way to describe "FADE: dis/appearances," the latest piece from local choreographer Crispin Spaeth. Not only is the set (artfully designed by Etta Lilienthal) dominated by the all-purpose material, Spaeth's dance also reveals an appreciation for all things pliable.

In the spooky and lovely opening segment, all five dancers lie on a stage that is covered entirely by a thick black tarp. As the dancers begin to squirm and arch their backs, the plastic wrinkles and twists in a way that's captivating both visually and audibly.

In the low light, the effect is of dark water rippling, with the dancers rolling on the surface like so much flotsam and jetsam.

The liquid aspect is reinforced as the tarp disappears into the back of the stage, like the sudden ebb of a massive tide (a neat trick). Two dancers appear to have washed up on the shore, newly evolved and ready to use their land-ready appendages.

Soon this pair is joined by the rest of the cast, which works together in various combinations of solo, duet and ensemble.

In an earlier interview with The Seattle Times, Spaeth made clear she had specific characters in mind for each dancer. While this is unclear on stage (no dancer appears more like an "astronaut" or a "night watchman" than any other), performers do exhibit unique phrases. The movement of the sole male dancer (Chay Norton) is particularly memorable, especially during the solo in which he appears to be measuring an invisible confinement.

As his arms shift swiftly from a tense bicep pump to a graceful swish at either side of his hips, it seems he's trying out different personas before our eyes — constantly gauging which fits best.

Other choreography is less distinct, with long, slow-motion arches collapsing into heaps, and duet partners both challenging and supporting each other.

Several moments feel stolen straight from recess, such as when dancers tease and taunt each other Red Rover and Marco Polo style. But childlike games are subverted by a strictly adult sort of play when performers climb up each other's bodies while rolling on the floor.

Expertly accompanying all this is the moody electronic score (by Yann Novak), which alternately rumbles like industrial thunder, chirps and tweets like frogs and crickets and intensifies to a hyped up beat-box pace.

At the close of the piece a red "OPEN" sign lights up, suggesting that what we've just seen was merely a prologue to the real story, which Spaeth is sure to tell us in future work.
– Brangien Davis ( Dancers reveal love of all things pliable, The Seattle Times)


Local choreographer Crispin Spaeth has a confession to make.

"I'm a little obsessed with the ground," she says. But anyone familiar with her work won't be surprised by such a revelation. Spaeth's past dances have often seemed crafted in the same mysterious manner of crop circles — complex earth-based patterns only fully visible when viewed from above.

In her current piece, "FADE: dis/appearances," Spaeth once again has her dancers on the floor, which is alternately a giant black tarp, a square of white light and a narrow conveyor belt of clear plastic. "We did a lot of experimenting with materials," Spaeth says, regarding her development process with set designer Etta Lilienthal. "We wanted to find the simplest devices possible to make full-scale changes occur."

Change is a central tenet of the piece, in which each of five characters (an astronaut, a survivor, a night watchman, a custodian, and a figure representing hope and faith) experiences a transformation of some sort — sometimes with the assistance of time travel.

An artist entering the twelfth year of her career, Spaeth has made a few transformations of her own over time. "I'm unabashedly modernist in ways I was afraid to be before," she says.

More specifically, Spaeth points to a recent transparency in her work. "I used to be sentimental, using a sort of sleight of hand to disguise the transitions in my work," she says. "But it's satisfying to let time go forward in a more obvious fashion."

Spaeth names "the tumbling forward of time" one of the major compositional elements of "FADE," as well as "the sense of doom that comes with that winnowing away." But this doesn't mean Spaeth is focused on the negative. As an example, she references the shift from light into darkness. "It's not as if the darkness is nothingness," she explains. "There's something there, too."

Similarly, the tumbling forward of time can result in substantial developments. For Spaeth it's meant something fairly significant: "I'm no longer worried that dance is stupid." Laughing at the fact that this realization only took 15 years or so, she adds with confidence, "I now know it's art."
– Brangien Davis (Groundedness and growth in Spaeth's 'Fade', The Seattle Times)