Yann Novak

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.