SeattleDances: Lens as Muse

This is a preview of my review of the split bill glitch for SeattleDances. Find the rest of the review here.

The show hasn’t started yet, but a little parade of dancers plods across the stage and out the door. With their brightly colored bobbed wigs and feet slapping against the floor in shuffling, toddling steps, they seem like little aliens trying to figure out the world, exploring a wire, a curtain, a chair with comically wide eyes. I want to follow them around, see where they’re going. Luckily, that’s exactly what’s about to happen.

Photo by Jim Coleman.

With dancers magnified and in focus, the camera highlights the differences in dancers’ expressions, the sharpness or softness of their gazes, the varying degrees of eye contact with the camera. [...] Another duet reveals more desperation and intimacy—dancers squishing each other’s faces, rolling on the floor, the camera pointed down at them to show them from above. There is something novel, but also slightly uncomfortable, about seeing these intimate gestures magnified to be larger than life. [...] It draws the eye and creates a kind of vulnerability and intimacy that’s hinted at throughout the piece.

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Read the rest of the review here.