The performance started even before the lights dimmed, with audience members hearing the rhythmic stomps while they took their seats. Alessandro Sciarroni’s will you still love me tomorrow? begins with the dancers standing in a circle, with all of their eyes taped shut except for Sciarroni’s. The audience watches as they perform the dance sequence, influenced by Bavarian and Tyrolean folk dance, that the audience members get to know very well as the performance continues. At the beginning of the performance, one of the dancers comes forth and explains that the performance will continue until either there is no one left in the audience or there is no dancer left on stage. Thus starts the beginning of the performance. If nothing else, the dance is amazing cardio feat, with the dancers dancing and hopping around for almost the entire duration of the dance. Just watching it left me exhausted.
The use of repetition was interesting. Though it could start to feel monotonous at times, it was broken up and made less tedious by the differing formations and interactions. Most of the beginning of the dance involved the dancers dancing seemingly by themselves. Only once they take the tape off of their eyes do they start to notice one another. As the dance progresses, they start to interact more and more often, starting first with glances, then watching one another and smiling, and then playing around with one another. Long portions were broken up by small sections of different combinations, straying from the rhythm the audience soon gets accustomed to, and by the use of humor. The dancers did a great job of engaging just enough with the audience. In addition, there was a refreshing mix of professional stage presence and the faltering of such a presence. Every once in a while, and becoming more common towards the end of the dance, audience members would see dancers smiling at one another or laughing or wiping their face or playing around with one another. Dancers would, either purposefully or not, mix up the combination or do something a little bit different from the rest of the group, and eventually, the others would follow. At first it seemed very purposeful, as though the choreographer was trying to say something about being unique and doing something different than the rest of the crowd, but as the performance went on, it became more difficult to tell what was improv and what was planned. The dance seemed to take a life of its own, and whether it was improv or choreographed, it was done tastefully so that there weren’t awkward changes and shifts as things changed and progressed.
The one aspect that did break some of the flow for me was when one of the dancers would, every so often, make his way off “stage” (still visible to the audience, given the nature of the dance space) to fiddle around with the music. While the use of music enhanced the performance, his exits often seemed to come at the wrong time or didn’t fit well with the natural rhythm of the combination, breaking the beat for me. The music, too, often just seemed to be put on at random times, perhaps when the dancer/musician felt the others were getting tired and needed a motivational boost.
Perhaps the most enjoyable part, however, was when the dancers found a way to add just a dash of humor into the performance. In dancing such an obviously tiring dance while also engaging with the audience, the dancers were able to make those watching invested in the dance as well. We eagerly await what they are going to do next, waiting to see how dancers will deviate from the worn, repetitive combination. And slowly, the audience watched as dancers started to leave, starting with Sciarroni leaving early on, teasing us with some heaves of the accordion, which reminded viewers of how exhausting the performance must be. But one by one, the dancers leave until three are left. The dancer manning the music goes off stage and starts playing Say Something. Suddenly, one of the remaining dancers leaves, leaving two alone, watching him leave. Like the audience, there’s a sense of sadness, of longing to leave (and perhaps run after the other dancer) as well. Before we know it, one of the two leaves, with the song playing in the background, emphasizing the hole left by the absence of the other dancers. The rhythm that became the soul of the performance is replaced by silence, only covered by the song playing. At last, the last dancer turns and runs off, not necessarily perfectly in time with the beat of the music, but still with a sense of finality.
This performance is one that everyone can enjoy, whether one has seen a million dances before or none at all. There is no denying the strength and endurance of the dancers, highlighted by our ability to see their hands and thighs growing redder or their clothes filling with sweat. Some of the dancers would even step off stage to get a drink of water before returning to the dance. The performers engage with and entertain the audience, making it exciting to watch. It was almost impossible for the audience members to talk about the performance as everyone filed out, with the constant rhythm still beating in our minds.
(On a side note, for those who went to the Judson Church performance with the “How long can you hold an absence?” performance, I found that this performance was sort of like the opposite of it. This was about how long the dancers could maintain their dancing before they left, rather than leaving as you got tired of waiting for something that wasn’t coming.)
