O’Con loves a mystery

Underneath Where We Are--the latest enigma from the interesting mind of choreographer Tara O’Con--features a couple of marvelously self-controlled performances by Jodi Bender and Megan Madorin at The Chocolate Factory. These two have a very difficult and sophisticated task: to draw an audience into the fine, delicate details of movement and of tactile experience, to keep watchers sharply focused even when the information coming from the dancers’ bodies aims to bypass the logic centers of the brain. It’s a gamble for O’Con and her collaborating dancers, and they win.

At the outset, a low rumble slithers beneath the dark, like a train passing deep below the building’s foundation. Opposite the audience, against a distant wall, an indistinct shape writhes in heavy shadow. The faintest light dusts the top of it, and eventually we can tell it is two bodies splayed against the wall, two women entwined, stretching with and collapsing upon each other. Since this opening goes on a while, a thought comes: What if this were to be the entire dance--Bender and Madorin endlessly twisting, twining and sinking, wallflowers drooping from weak stalks--could that gamble work? Interesting to contemplate. I almost think it could. In more light, however, they collapse to the floor and rest.

This pause afforded a moment to reflect on the abstract work of art that is The Chocolate Factory’s interior. Most of O’Con’s dance is performed quietly, slowly, and with reference to the space and its unusual features--the dark, ominous-looking shaftway, helpfully labeled SHAFTWAY and barricaded with two horizontal metal bars; the patchy-surfaced sliding door; the thick, vertical pipe at one side. Dancers never--to my best recollection--look into our eyes; most often, they dance with their backs or sides facing us, and they emphasize only the life of the animal body, not the life of any identifiable ego. They attend to their own bodies or to the surfaces of the space, and that attention seems to have nothing to do with us--at least, on an intellectual level. But O’Con makes us feel the breathing of bodies--quite literally, at times, as when Bender pants heavily after her solo to the old Motown tune, “Who’s Loving You,” a singular eruption from the identifiable world of pop culture. We also perceive, strongly, the breathing presence and soul of place.

With lighting by Chloë Z. Brown and sound design and compositioin by Jason Sebastian

Underneath Where We Are continues, nightly at 8pm, through Saturday evening. Click here for information and ticket reservations.

The Chocolate Factory
5-49 49th Avenue
Long Island City, Queens
718-482-7069
(directions)