Selective Memory–presented by Brian Rogers of The Chocolate Factory at The Chocolate Factory in Long Island City–achieves a most eerie intimacy with its audience. To witness it feels, at times, as if one has fallen into what one is watching and weirdly exchanged places with or fused with performer and multi-faceted creative collaborator Madeline Best.
The roughly 50-minute performance takes place in flesh and blood–Best standing before us, nearly motionless or making slight, generally uninflected movements–as well as in projection of her image upon two screens (set design by Brad Kisicki). The first screen, hanging down like a shower curtain, traces a curving shape in the space, a little like the Greek letter omega lying on its back. The second screen is a narrow rectangle suspended several feet in front of the deepest inner curve of the omega.
Rogers sits to the left of the space behind a Mac, a panel of audio controls and a table-top keyboard. Best–wearing sensible shoes and a navy blue dress with fussy tiers of fabric–enters the space and stands just within the curtain’s curve. She’s holding something in her right hand that appears to be a remote control of some sort, but you’ll rarely catch her using it. Swirling sounds and faint voices are heard. Lights dim.
Best takes a few steps, centering herself deep in the curve. The sounds intensify–a shrill rumble, an indistinct voice. Her face appears on the front screen. A faintly-troubled hush embraces this quiet face with its blinking, sensitive blue eyes framed by straw-colored shoulder-length hair and bangs. Slight, almost imperceptible shifts of her head can be detected the more one looks and looks and looks for long stretches of time. And so, with this most minimalist of minimalist choreography, Rogers begins his campaign of snaring watchers. Did you catch that minuscule twitch? Will she suck up her lower lip one more time? As she makes this next shallow pivot, will she suddenly break out in something a little less subtle, more macro?
It’s amusing to imagine someone thinking, “When will the dancing happen?” This is the dancing.
The face on the screen creates an illusion of Best being closer to each one of us that she could possibly be. And, as you think about it, you realize that’s because she strongly resembles a viewer looking out at a performer–expressionless, curious and expectant, perhaps suspicious, perhaps not daring to make a move, suspending the next breath. Best looks like your neighbors in the row, and like yourself. What, then, is she doing there? But this passes once you think about it too much.
You can imagine all kinds of things that could be happening. You can populate this stripped-down place with a multitude of effects and beings and meanings. That would be your memory, selected. Or you can leave it alone.
Rogers brings up a warm buzz or hum and, later, a short, melodic loop as the screen zooms in on a detail of Best’s face from the lower reaches of her bangs to just below her nose. Her eyes–always watchful, though placid--search us out as she shifts in slow motion. The encounter is hypnotic and an endurance trial. A new development–she turns, and we see the back of her head on the screen–seems like a major advancement in a story we still cannot identify, a new chapter. A close-up of her left ear and cheek and chin feels like a punctuation mark. But what was that sentence?
The thought returns: We’ve been motionless, expressionless, silent, blinking as we stare out at Best--as into a mirror-covered object–for close to 45 minutes.
The screen shows us a close-up of the collar of her dress, her chin, her lips. A real-time projection of her appears on the curtain behind her, just to the left of its center seam. (A new dimension!) In short order, we see multiple shifting, drifting Bests populating the space, only one of them made of flesh and blood. The finale–green, serene and dreamy–seems like it should be a breakthrough but feels unreal, surreal and definitely elusive for the flesh-and-bloods sitting in the seats. Best slips away from us, vanished by the devices that brought her to us and, perhaps, brought us to ourselves.
Wednesdays-Saturdays, through September 18 (8pm)
5-49 49th Avenue, Long Island City, Queens
#7 subway to Vernon/Jackson Avenue
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