In recent years, several choreographers, mostly from Europe, have tried to put club culture and the experience of a rave onto a theater stage. Sharon Eyal’s “R.O.S.E.” goes further: It is a rave.
For the production’s North American premiere, the back quarter of the Park Avenue Armory’s vast Drill Hall has been converted into a club. The huge volume of vertical space and the vaulted roof, high above, suggest a converted airplane hangar or factory. Seatless risers (with a small section of chairs reserved for those who need them) surround a central dance floor. In one corner, the D.J. Ben UFO expertly controls the sonic flow, as colored lights (designed by Alon Cohen and Brandon Stirling Baker) rhythmically pierce the haze from many angles.
There is a cast of professional dancers, but they don’t appear until 45 minutes into the full three-hour experience. They perform for intervals of five to 15 minutes, then disappear for similar amounts of time, leaving the audience to entertain itself until the next appearance — dancing or watching others dance, perhaps buying a drink from one of the two bars.
Those performers are an odd tribe, though the oddness will be familiar to anyone who has seen the work that Eyal, an Israeli choreographer, has been creating with Gai Behar, a rave producer, for the last decade or so. Heavy eyeliner streaks down their faces, as though they’ve been weeping. Their androgynous costumes (by Maria Grazia Chiuri of Christian Dior Couture) are like lingerie, lacy and artfully torn, some accessorized with matching cowls and cinch sacks.
At first, they stick together in formations, opening up as rose petals do then snaking through the crowd and up and down the risers like a conga line of consumptives. Angular and so uptight they’re almost arthritic, they mince on the balls of their feet and strike mildly contortionist, Mannerist poses. They appear to have been broken and awkwardly glued back together. At one point, they do a clumpy kick line while connected hand to earlobe rather than arm over shoulder. But such flashes of wit are exceptions. Often the performers press knuckles to their cheeks, like clowns miming sadness.
Like dancers in a club, they pulsate to the beat, rolling shoulders, cocking hips, pumping pelvises. But they don’t do this naturally. Rather, they resemble aliens trying imitate dancers in a club, mimicking the moves but missing the feel. Despite the lingerie and a few fetish gestures like hands on throats, they are devoid of eroticism. Even in solos, they don’t find any freedom of motion. The crowd may cheer them on, but they are trapped in Eyal’s aesthetic, unable to get down.
As eventually becomes apparent, they are actually two tribes: the nine members of Eyal’s company (in beige) supplemented by a dozen local dancers (in black). The New Yorkers supply some verve, mixing in bits of voguing and waacking. And the liveliest moment of the evening comes when the two teams face off, each lifting a queen overhead in a spatchcocked pose.
In a program note, the creators (who also include Caius Pawson and Mattis With of the London-based arts organization Young) write of wanting to break down the arbitrary distances of traditional theater and make Eyal’s work more accessible. They succeed, but in a self-negating way.
In “R.O.S.E.,” the dancers are on the same level as audience members, moving among them, but they are always conspicuously other. After a while, they almost feel like intruders, unthreateningly foreign and fairly predictable. Their comings and goings, in a fragmentary but semi-regular rhythm, start to seem like somewhat diverting but possibly unnecessary interruptions. On opening night, the dancing of the spectators grew freer as the evening grew long. As the wallflowers gradually left, those remaining appeared to relax into their role.
If you go, go with friends and go to dance. You don’t have to worry about how you look. With Eyal’s company around, it won’t be you who seems most out of place.
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