RoseAnn Spradlin’s beginning of something was interesting, but the audience’s reaction to it was even more so; it was captivating. As the four women flew to the edges of the stage, their bodies completely bared, some lookers-on grew wide-eyed at the flesh undulating and jiggling. Some looked away when a performer extended her hand or tried to make eye contact while some grasped the hand in front of them; some seemed to lean in to the performance while others sat rigidly in their seats. Audience members reacted in a wide spectrum of ways (from crying to smiling uncontrollably to nodding off to sleep) to each part of the performance.

Sophie remarked that, in the very beginning of the performance, no one sat in the four seats directly in front of the naked woman strumming an electric bass. At the end of the performance, when the last dancer had walked off the stage platform, the audience seemed to fall in on itself, the four sides collapsing in and crashing against each other at the absence of performers to take up space–act as a buffer–between the four sides of the rooms.

My last remark is that this piece felt more like a multimedia performance than a dance. The dance components were central and powerful, but I feel that “dance” does not fully or accurately described what we witnessed tonight. beginning of something feels like a journey into an unfamiliar dimension more than it feels like watching women dance.