Monday, November 15, 2010
Dance Review: Blackbird a story of exploitation told through dance
Posted by Andrew Alexander on Mon, Nov 15, 2010 at 10:08 AM
- Will Day
- Caged Bird: Kristyn McGeehan performs in Brooks and Company's Blackbird
The movement was strong throughout, both by the members of Brooks and Company and by the guest children dancers of the Good Moves Consort. I loved the use of occasional, audible intakes of breath, both in Brooks' show and in the short, elegant balletic pre-show piece “Trinity,” choreographed by Brooks dancer Kristyn McGeehan. Like movement itself, breath calls us back to the physicality and presence of a body, which became particularly resonant in this show. A standout dancer for me was McGeehan herself as the social worker who rescues the girls. Her pretty elegant turns, as well as her always present and compelling interaction with the other dancers, came across as healing and restorative in every sense.
The use of abstract, symbolic elements—a green scarf to represent money or red ribbons tied around the wrist to represent captivity in a brothel or the recurring motif of a birdcage—were effective: it was immediately clear who had money, who needed it, where it was going and why, or who was captive and who wasn't. One of the most moving moments of the show came when one of the sisters—rescued from the brothel, but unable to adjust to life on the outside, unable to leave behind the degradation of her past life—returns to the brothel and allows her wrists to be tied again.
Brooks is a strong story-teller, and the narrative arc was always clear and compelling, but I occasionally found myself drawn to the show's more abstract elements. At one point, three of the young Good Moves dancer entered in schoolgirl uniforms with backpacks on their backs and walked around in unison: they sat down suddenly and took out layer after layer of stockings from the backpacks and put them on. It was surreal, nightmarish, a protective but senseless and ultimately powerless action. The show's earnestness and immediacy receded, and a more personal, more haunting, less specific, less describable sense of fear and degradation emerged.
Child exploitation is a troubling subject, but the medium of dance made for a resonant way to take it on. A dancer's body is so immediate, so present : I definitely got a sense of the pain, degradation, humiliation and unerasable grief of the main characters. Brooks was able to get at something physical, an almost palpable form of grief, at the heart of her story. All in all, it was a very strong show which conveyed a narrative full of complicated emotions deftly, movingly and gracefully. It was a difficult subject, but it is Brooks' compassion and sensitivity—her willingness to understand the scars that such abuse leaves on individuals—which ultimately gave the show its weight and resonance.
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