Skip to main content
I thought all the bedsheets would be white.
Instead, as we enter the Conduit dance studio for Luke George's Time-Based Art Festival performance, volunteers drape us in sheets in shades of lavender, pale pink, taupe, seafoam green. I wear soft yellow. We look less like Klansmen or kids in homemade Halloween ghost costumes than like those pastel-colored marshmallows, blown up to human size and given two tiny eye holes. It is warm—very, very warm—under here. Some people begin to sweat, their perspiration staining the sheet. I give a little sniff and am relieved I remembered to apply deodorant this morning. (I presume they launder the linens in between performances.) People flounce around and twirl, identifiable only by their shoes, and I become very aware of the range of footwear, which ranges from fabulous to frightful.
If you plan on seeing (experiencing?) Not About Face—and I do recommend it—I'd suggest you stop reading now. Some works benefit from scads of context. This is not one of them: It's weird and surprising and sometimes unsettling, as much a piece of performance art as an exercise in how we—and our fellow marshmallows—react to the events around us.
Those events? Well, there's convulsive, awkward movement from George and collaborator Hilary Clark (who on Sunday wore a wonderfully grandma-chic T-shirt with a cat on it), repetitive talk about aura-reading and energy conversion, discussions of telepathy, and entreaties to shout, sing, shake and spoon.
There's much of this that seems to be striving for ritual, which George talked about when I interviewed him last week. I wasn't able to give myself over. The reasons for that are manifold: I tend towards hyper-awareness; I'm skeptical of new-age woo-woo; it was, as previously mentioned, sweltering beneath the sheet. Mostly, though, every time I glanced around the studio—not the easiest task, because the eyeholes block most peripheral vision—everyone looked so damned silly. It's kind of wonderful, actually, and I would have been glad to run with that goofiness for longer. That's not where George takes it, which is fine—but I think I've got the seed for my next costume party.
SEE IT: Not About Face is at Conduit Dance, 918 SW Yamhill St., Suite 401. 8:30 pm Tuesday-Thursday, Sept. 16-18. $16-$20. Tickets here.
WWeek 2015