Kayla Farrish directs film into dance
By Garth Grimball
Ours is a time of references. The average smartphone user consumes more content in an hour than our ancestors did in their whole lives. Text, images, videos, sounds, and media all swaddle us in competition for attention and influence. Each piece of content begets a reference that begets another piece of content, and so on. Where is the creative signal amidst the referential noise?
On March 8-10, Kayla Farrish/Decent Structures Arts presented “Put Away the Fire, dear” at ODC Theater in San Francisco. The evening-length dance theater overflows with references. Farrish grounds the concept in the visual language of film and cinematic references, but literature, music and visual arts are all packed into this kaleidoscopic epic into archives and erasure.
“Put Away the Fire, dear” is split into two acts; act one is text heavy. At one point Farrish refers to herself as a mix between Alfred Hitchcock, Tyler Perry and Jordan Peele. She and her five cast mates deliver on the extreme tonal shifts that would be the result of combining said three directors.
Jessica Alexander, Christian Paris Blue, Imani Gaudin, Kerime Konur and Christian Warner join Farrish in dancing, singing and acting. Triple threats all, this is one of the most talented ensembles I have seen in recent memory.
Musician Alex MacKinnon is a tour-de-force. He plays live and is able to seamlessly switch between be-bop jazz, foley sound effects, and Angelo Badalamenti-esque synth soundscapes.
The stage is set with various moveable frames, veils and scenarios. There is a wall with trompe-l'oeil distressed wall paper, a doorway, a large curtain, an office scene and a kitchen table scene. The lighting designer Yannick Godts bathes the stage in a warm glow of hanging light bulbs.
The cast enters crouched and searching. In a reference to the unnamed narrator of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, the dancers seem to be underground feeling their way towards visibility, towards being visible.
Konur’s performance most closely references a director. She films her cast mates, she writes, she rages against the dying of the light—the limitations of language and images in conveying the humanity of the marginalized so often used as props linguistically and filmically. At one point while looking through the camera’s eye piece, she said, “I’m really seeing.” The moment brought to mind the social media era dictum, “photo or it didn’t happen.” Only what is recorded, what makes it into the archives, is to be believed and valued.
Act one evolves through layers upon layers of text and movement often delivered as overlapping solos and duets. Farrish isolates and jerks her way through space evoking a movie montage in a stand out solo. Gaudin and Warner fall into and support each other in an improvisational duet. Jazz riffs and the concept of deja vu are referenced in the text. The work becomes self-referential by commenting on the formal parameters as they are being performed.
In addition to the three directors, there are explicit references to Alice Walker’s The Color Purple, Billie Holiday, Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind, and Passing by Nella Larsen. I saw visual references to Carrie Mae Weems, Douglas Sirk films, and adaptations of Tennessee Williams plays.
In act two the lighting is white and unfriendly like the spotlights used in interrogations or search parties. The costuming by Caitlin Taylor develops from the 1940s workaday pastiche of act one to 1950s silhouettes. Twice the ensemble comes together for big, beautiful unison dancing. Farrish’s choreography utilizes the entire kinesphere with lunges and turns and reaches that have the bounce of swing dancing and the showmanship of Busby Berkeley.
At one point Farrish and Blue connect in a swirling duet. They lift each other. Their compassionate contact snaps the focus from panoramic to intimate close up. Blue cradles Farrish’s neck and waist and it looks like she is floating, free of references that diminish her humanity.
“Put Away the Fire, dear” is 2 hours 15 minutes in length. The motifs and performance qualities become repetitive as the second act comes to a close. There is a final moment of joyful spreading as the dancers free themselves from any frame. But the production ends up feeling like a director’s cut that could edit a few references.
Garth Grimball is a dance writer and artist based in Oakland, CA. He is a contributor to SF Examiner and Dance Media. He is the editor of ODC’s Dance Stories.
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