Rugged Terrain

Diana Szeinblum
“Alaska”
Dance Theater Workshop
New York, NY
February 7, 2008

by Lisa Rinehart © 2008

Diana Szeinblum’s “Alaska” is a searing trek over emotionally scorched earth – not an uncommon journey in the world of dance theater, but one Szeinblum navigates with fearless zeal. This is unsurprising from a veteran of Germany’s Folkwang Tanz Schule with Pina Bausch as Artistic Director, but Szeinblum is disciplined in her explorations. With the help of four extraordinarily committed dancers, Lucas Condro, Noelia Leonzio, Alejandra Ferreyra Ortiz and Pablo Lugones, Szeinblum peers into the body’s caverns of remembered experience and finds a spiky terrain of obsession, anger, and frustration. She calls it “a place we all know but nobody has ever been.” I call it prime real estate for psychotherapists, and thankfully, artists.

It’s evident from the start what we’re in for. Even before the dancers move, the space feels charged with angst. A computerized hum underpins much of Ulises Conti’s agitated score for piano and violin, and Lugones sits with a sign around his neck that reads, “Estoy desesperado,” (“I am desperate”). We don’t really need the sign – he already looks convincingly desperate in his spindly chair adrift on a white glazed floor.

It’s desperation, however, that binds together Szeinblum’s diverse physical articulations of unexpressed emotion. The dancers are wild and unrestrained, attacking the movement as though putting themselves through some sort of exorcism. Ortiz performs a mute wail by repeatedly flinging her arms back and bending deeply forward from the waist. She pushes the backs of her hands along her inner thighs in a frenzy of desire that is never satisfied. Leonzio runs up behind Condro, throws herself over his shoulder and crawls down the front of his body as though trying to absorb him. They grapple with one another as she pushes her body through the tiniest of openings created by his crooked elbow or bent knee. She seems everywhere at once as clothing is stripped off like skin flayed from a corpse. It’s a disturbing picture of obsession in motion.

There are quieter moments in “Alaska,” but not many. One of the more beautiful and tragic is when Ortiz finally faces Lugones to kiss him. The two embrace and kiss as Leonzio slides between them and presses herself to Lugones as though her bodyweight is everything unsaid by the two lovers. There’s also a lyrical solo by Condro who curves his body into the elongated bend of a reed blown by the wind. It’s a suggestion of unsuspected resiliency, and the little bit of optimism we’re hungry for. Less sublime is when Condro takes a break and seats himself up close to the audience.  “Now you can ask me personal questions,” he says. I don’t think so. Another false note is when composer Conti rises from his place at the piano, and in semi-shadow, inexplicably crosses the stage in front of the dancers. Are we supposed to not notice him? It’s a strange moment in a dance where every gesture is freighted with meaning.

Szeinblum relies heavily on her dancers for raw movement material and considers herself more director than choreographer. Her grasp of pacing is evidence that she’s right. Material this dense and humorless could easily become unwatchable, but Szeinblum intersperses bursts of movement with silent pauses that are just long enough to let us breathe. She ends “Alaska” with a reprise of Condro’s quiet soliloquy, and the lights fade as he moves slowly and deliberately in the gloom. It’s a certain kind of hopefulness in a wide, desolate land.

Photos by Julieta Cervantes
Top: Alejandra Ferreyra Ortiz; Pablo Lugones
Bottom: Lucas Condro; Noelia Leonzio; Pablo Lugones