*blink* REVIEW

*blink*
movement/addiction
together with
the imaging research centre at umbc

Once again Baltimore artists and professionals demonstrate absolute excellence in their fields and provide meaningful entertainment for their neighbors.

"*blink*" consisted of "two multi-media performance events," body.txt and skip/stop, that combined the talents of poet, choreographers, dancers, videographers, composers, musicians, and image researchers to tell human stories in sublime ways. These multi-media worked together intimately in the service both of the pieces' content and of their form.

The event body.txt is based on the poem "body.txt" which Noel Marie Jones, a national slam poetry champion, wrote in the collaboration. It begins:

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the body has a language all its own...

Could there be a better starting place for dance, music and poetry? Whether or not the poem was written in the presence of the collaborators, the performance event made it seem as though it had the full participation of the choreographers, dancers, musicians, and image makers--all telling the story together. The poem provided the bones and structure of body.txt, even for the viewer who had not read it prior to the performance. The event was a whole, in itself.

body.txt's themes were universal human ones of birth, growth, sense-ation, desire, pursuit, communication, aloneness, hope, death, and comfort. The event used minimal set, costumes, and props (black background; two relatively small projection screens; neutral/cream colored tops, shorts, and knee wraps; and neutral/cream latex sheets), which provided multiple, sometimes moving and overlapping, surfaces for the projection of works, images, live video, time-lapse video, and pre-recorded video. Sounds also were made with combinations of live and pre-recorded notes, beats, and noises. These elements worked without excess (even with restraint!) to further the communication of "body.txt" themes and narrative.

movement/addiction, the dance company, provided superb performances in acknowledgement to body.txt's tribute to language of the body. An excerpt from the poem...

at nearby tables
dancer spins and eclipses dancer
necks arc up in unison
one hand squeezes another

dancer spins and eclipses dancer
something of universal importance is
happening
one hand squeezes another
in unmistakable agreement...

It was an added plus to see this performed by a company of dancers so well-matched physically.

Renee Brozic and Sarah D. Seely, the co-artistic directors, choreographers, (and dancers) of movement/addiction, credit the collaboration of company dancers in the creation of body.txt. Timothy Nohe provided sound direction; Brendan Howell did the video; and Evan Wiegand and Jeff Jordan operated live feed cameras. Along with Noel Jones, the other dancers, musicians, and technical image makers, they made an engaging, thought-provoking and sophisticated statement of how the full collaboration of technology and humans can bring new insight to eternal themes.

The second piece of the evening, skip/stop, was a more traditional, but still excellent, collaboration between movement/addiction and Timothy Nohe's sound artists. skip/stop was a lighter-look at more everyday human verities: the feelings of being left behind and the difficulties of connecting. It provided a fine, but not insubstantial, dessert to the evening's main course.

It will be tragic if these pieces are not performed at larger venues with full stage resources to bigger audiences. These collaborators deserve national and international exposure. Congratulations to the Creative Alliance for presenting these world premieres.

And fringe'sters, count yourselves lucky to live in this city.

Saturday, February 5, Performance (sold out) reviewed
Creative Alliance at the Patterson
3134 Eastern Avenue
www.movementaddiction.org
http://www.irc.umbc.edu/
www.creativealliance.org

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