HOLDING UP THE HOUSE
Of course, like every artist, Shineflug has had her triumphs and failures, but even her outrageously aggravating failures have been strangely interesting. She has a keen wit, a good choreographic imagination, a sophisticated intelligence, and a curiosity about the society she inhabits. Independence and integrity are the hallmarks of the artist and the woman. I have a hunch she even welcomes sharp critical comment. It’s a sign the audience is awake.
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“Holding up the House,” the slyly titled concert that Shineflug, Jeff Abell, Shaun Gilmore, and Bryan Saner cooperatively presented last weekend, certainly didn’t put anyone to sleep. The four pieces on the program might be described as holding up, if not the traditional house of modern dance, the house of what is now loosely called performance art–with a little music, a little movement, and a lot of speech. The monologues and dialogues in Nothing up Your Sleeve took on the holiest of our icons–mother-son relationships–and in The Box, our more recent holy icon, television.
Weighing the Planets, choreographed by Gilmore and danced by Mario Rico-Fuentes and Jane Kelly to the taped, throbbing drums of Olatunji, is a striking, brief, fast-moving dance. Purely abstract, it shows off the two performers’ fluid relationship with each other well.
