In the fog with "Vulture-Wally"

Dance artist Jillian Sweeney and director/writer Jeffrey Cranor strike just the right balance between earnest mysteriousness and kickass satire in their new work, Vulture-Wally, a presentation of Incubator Arts Project's New Performance Series at St. Mark's Church. As described by Sweeney, the 65-minute, immersive Vulture-Wally

uses spoken word, song, and dialog to create a long-form poem about who owns our bodies and who authors our stories. Based on the 19th century Austrian Alps folk novel Geier-Wally, the dance dissects the melodramatic hero(ine) by examining individual body parts and pairing the movement with deconstructed classic film scores.

Set in IAP's small, black box theater--upstairs from the more familiar Danspace Project home in the church's sanctuary--the work unfolds in a dimly-lit space engulfed in artificial fog.* Faint lines of light often demarcate areas of new action, guiding the circulating audience members to position themselves out of the way of developing scenes. People sometimes perch on risers that extend across one wall but, now and again, watchers have to make way for dancers.

In fact, Vulture-Wally opens with Sweeney's dancers--Siobhan Burke, Lydia Chrisman and Tara Willis--dramatically gesturing as they tread back and forth, in strained and grave slow motion, across those risers in the mist and Vincent Vigilante's filtered light. Vaguely romantic music plays faintly in the background. Sweeney, moving even more sparingly, occupies a separate box of light in a corner of the theater, and we must deliberately lose sight of the severe trio to turn around and catch up on whatever she's doing. The "chapters" of the piece unfold a story of either conforming to authority or striking off on one's own. Hell is indeed other people who wield cosmetic brushes or singalong hymns.

Cranor's clever text and the excellent performance by Sweeney and company make a worthwhile event of this smart, accomplished work.

*One important note of caution: If you have respiratory allergies, a cold or asthma, the ever-present fog might prove challenging. It's not the same as watching fake fog billow across the stage of a big theater at the normal, safer remove. You're all up in it for a full hour. I'm still struggling this morning with congested nasal passages and a severely irritated throat. For information on adverse health effects of fog or smoke machines, see here.

Vulture-Wally continues this evening through Sunday with performances at 8pm. For tickets, click here.

Incubator Arts Project
St. Marks Church-in-the-Bowery
131 East 10th Street at Second Avenue, 2nd Floor, Manhattan
(directions)

Sweeney: Could be

In This could be it, choreographer-soloist Jillian Sweeney, gives herself a tough assignment. She must fill a fairly unforgiving space--The Chocolate Factory, modest in size, intimate for the audience and raw in aspect--with the stuff of her inner, psychic life. She must also fill an hour and hold it down with the force of her personality. I'm not convinced that she's totally there yet--a compelling performer who can, indeed, hold down an hour and keep it from feeling too lengthy and self-indulgent--but I admire her poise and moxie.

This solo evening--concluding its run tomorrow--hinges on the artist's apparent predisposition to spontaneously go out of body. Through various creative means, it tells of her history with this phenomenon. Now, consider that we're talking about a dancer. The notion of a dancer not being all that tightly wedded to her actual physical form is pretty interesting, and Sweeney's ambitious approach offers a variety of ways to contemplate this state of affairs.

Sweeney's a pleasant, wholesome-looking young woman who starts her show by striking glamour-girl poses, hip jutting in a ridiculous fashion--not how you'd normally think of her. So, immediately, she's showing something of a disconnection, a picture of unreality. Her poses become tense, and her tiny moves quiver as if she's in a silent movie. She's also subject to the psychological lashings of a disembodied voice--her own, recorded--that meets her gentle equivocations with a demand that she "Say it!" and issues instructions, some of them contradictory. I was tickled when Sweeney finally--finally!--figured out that she could simultaneously "Go to the shaft!" and "Stay down!" if she just rolled the hell over to that shaftway!

That unrelenting Voice can be a bit of hoot. For those of you who will go tonight or tomorrow, I won't spoil it for you by revealing my favorite moment. At the risk of sounding like The Voice that she's already got inside her artist's head, I'd like to see her push that wit harder and Say It! Whatever it is, just Say It!

This could be it unfolds, with fine support for Sweeney, in a space created by Brian Rogers (sound and video) and Chloë Z. Brown (lighting). Sweeney collaborated with her director Jeffrey Cranor on the writing and set (which consists of her storytelling props) and with Mary McKenzie on the costumes.

See This could be it tonight or Saturday night at The Chocolate Factory, 8pm. Information, directions and tickets here.