The calendar says March, not August or September, but Friday night's performance of
SCUBA
at Temple's Conwell Dance Theater looked an awful lot like the Fringe Festival.
Maybe it was the man dressed as a giant stalk of corn, pining for his long-lost fungus. Or the site-specific work minus the site. Or two solos that were more than a little curious.
The offbeat award for the evening went to Mexican dancer-choreographer José Navarrete's excerpts from
The Revenge of Huitlacoche
. Program notes explain that
huitlacoche
is a swollen black fungus that grows on corn. It is eaten as a delicacy in Mexico, but in the United States "has been persecuted with fungicides and genetic modification to near extinction."
Navarrete, dressed in sort of a hula skirt of corn husks, was passionate about this fungus' fate, tossing hard kernels of corn in the air and thrusting handfuls at audience members. "Go to Northern Liberties!" he said, pleading with them to spread the seeds and the gospel of the fungus. "Go to North Philly!" In between, he shimmied, ran across the stage and rolled on the ground.
During a prologue, Navarette hung upside down from the rafters. He performed tai chi and yoga moves, walked across the stage while a picture of Jesus flashed on a computer screen and took a great mouthful of white feathers, spewing them up in the air until they snowed down on him.
Unusual doesn't begin to describe this piece, which may be more insightful if seen as a whole. But that doesn't detract from the entertainment factor. It's a piece I won't soon forget.
Karen Sherman, a Bessie Award-winning choreographer based in Minnesota, offered two solos: "Suspicion of Modeling," danced to Joni Mitchell's "Help Me" among a tangle of orange extension cords surrounded by box fans and oscillating fans, and "Who Are You to Steven," which, I discovered only after the fact, was performed while Sherman was soaking wet.
Kate Watson-Wallace and four other dancers performed her "Car," a work in progress that will be presented as a finished work at this year's Live Arts Festival. Usually, "Car" is danced in a car, but for
SCUBA,
it was danced on stage, with no car.
Watson-Wallace is one of the more clever artists working in Philadelphia, but it was difficult to make sense of the site-specific work without the site.