The cinematic Sally Silvers: "Actual Size" opens at Roulette

Dylan Crossman and Melissa Toogood
in Sally Silvers's Actual Size
(photo: Karen Robbins)

Of course, if you want dancing most immaculate, you'll do no wrong by turning to artists like Melissa Toogood, Dylan Crossman, Alicia Ohs, Carolyn Hall and Luke Miller. The internal, shifting, watery evanescence of a piece like Actual Size--an hour-long fantasia on a theme by Alfred Hitchcock--requires something steady to grab hold of, even if only for a moment. These dancers take the best of what choreographer Sally Silvers has on offer here--the clear shapeliness of her Hitchcock-evocative movement and interactions--and makes that even more vivid as bodies drift or struggle in a noirish snow globe of evocative sound snippets, atmospheric lighting, and projected imagery including, at times, photos of their oversized, incongrously grinning faces. To borrow words from Bruce Andrews's puckish and self-conscious voiceover text, Actual Size exists as "a closeup of confetti" and a blurring of motives."

Crossman and Toogood
(photo: Karen Robbins)

I think I'm not supposed to say here which avant-garde luminary will be on hand as guest dancer--a different one each night--but you'll find the complete list of all of them right there in your program. For opening night, Silvers "surprised" us by dancing with Pooh Kaye, which introduced a different way of being with Hitchcock--two little scamps or kittens tussling underfoot in a darkened living room, making their own fun, heedless of everyone else's fascination with North by Northwest.

Video: Ursula Scherrer
Text/sound: Bruce Andrews
Music: Michael Schumacher
Lighting: Joe Levasseur
Costumes: Elisabeth Hope Clancy

Actual Size continues through Friday, November 7 with performances at 8pm.

Roulette
509 Atlantic Avenue (corner of 3rd Avenue), Brooklyn
(map/directions)