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There is no seating. No stage.
The bare wood floor of Conduit Dance's studio is divided into three rows by pocket-sized flashlights, turned upside down so that only small rings of light peek through. After being ushered into a row, audience members chatter casually—until someone starts dancing. Then a couple begins to waltz.
It's opening night of SubRosa Dance's Displacement, a five-dance show exploring the emotional and physical tolls of relocation, with live electric guitar, piano accordion, feudal horn and kalimba by Indira Valey.
There is no separation between dancers and audience, and suddenly the lights go out, leaving everyone in pitch black. It is silent except for the wailing of subtle vowel sounds, which are being mixed live and layered on top of each other in a soundscape evocative of a Middle Eastern dawn. Then the dancers pick up flashlights and hand them to audience members, making them responsible for lighting the show with fifty miniature spotlights.
Conduit's studio is as much a character in the performance as any of the dancers, with one dance staged on the building's window ledge and another right against the floor-to-ceiling mirror.
While each dance explores displacement, no two feel too alike. The first is a woman's dance with her suitcase, a prop that reappears at the end of the show in a moment that feels too expected. Another piece begins as a couple's waltz and quickly turns monstrous when they push each other out of the way and lift each other upside down, like a breakup in dance form.
Because each piece takes place in a different part of the studio, the audience is constantly switching position to see; sometimes standing, sometimes sitting and always peering around each other. It makes you appreciate the lighting and setting though, watching a dancer's shadow projected on the wall or catching a glimpse in the studio mirror. The moments where you simply can't see the dancers lets you turn your attention to how cool Valey's music is: a live and evolving electronic soundtrack.
SubRosa makes its audience work. This is not a sit back and relax sort of show; it's uncomfortable. And not to hit the point home too hard, but it really does make you feel out of place.
GO: Conduit Dance, 2505 SE 11th Ave. #120, 221-5857. 6 pm Saturday-Sunday, Jan. 30-31. $15.
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