BAM, and then it hit me

The Brooklyn Academy of Music, or BAM, as people affectionately call it, was always a mere block away from Brooklyn Tech.  I passed it by more than a million times on my silent trek to the Atlantic Avenue train station after school, wondering what was inside the massive building with shimmering lights. And now, for the first time, I was about to enter BAM to see Hofesh Shechter’s Political Mother.

The performance began with darkness. The curtain opened to reveal one man, wearing a suit of armor and wielding a sword. At first, I thought that the man looked like a samurai. My thoughts were confirmed as I shockingly watched the man reenact seppuku, the ancient Japanese form of suicide through disembowelment. The man cried out in agony. I could have sworn that it looked so real and I was afraid that the man had actually pierced his stomach with his own sword. But soon, there was darkness. The main part of Political Mother began.

I’ve never been to a rock concert, but Political Mother came extremely close. All the musical instruments were blaring and booming and blasting. The music consumed the whole auditorium. At first, the incessant noise was annoying because it was extremely loud, but I got used to it. The spotlight shined on a group of dancers dressed in informal clothing. They moved to the tempo of the music, which seemed to repeat the same few notes throughout the performance. It went something like “Da dun. Dun dun dun. Da dun. Dun dun dun.”

The dancers’ movements looked nontraditional and outlandish. They jerked their entire bodies into abnormal positions and twitched their appendages in random motions. It seemed as if every single dancer was having a seizure on stage. One particular movement that stood out was a zombie-like raising of the arms out in front and running around in a circle. I had never seen such a dance move. I would certainly describe it as Dionysian, which Friedrich Nietzsche describes in The Birth of Tragedy as a complete losing of oneself, and giving into one’s innermost emotions. The dancers definitely looked like they were losing control and letting their own bodies take over.

The title of the performance became more and more apparent as the production went on. Different spotlights focused on performers at different times; there was a line of drummers dressed in what looked like plain army uniforms, several musicians on elevated platforms playing stringed instruments, and a man shouting into a microphone on an elevated platform. The screaming man reminded me of a dictator, especially because of the performer’s stiff and frantic body language—the performer moved around while constantly shaking his fists and raging. The dancers seemed to respond to the dictator’s roars by facing the dictator and jerking their arms up in his direction.

Overall, the title Political Mother got me thinking. The dancers’ movements seemed to symbolize rebellion against control, particularly because the disorderly dance moves appeared to bend all traditional rules of dance. It was as if the dancers were demonstrating their freedom to do as they wished by presenting their crazy dance moves.

The performance was unconventional and interesting to watch. It was an unexpectedly enjoyable night for me, because I was able to experience a different form of interpretive dance in Political Mother.