Game Time Brings It
By Sarah Genta
Like boxers in their pre-match corner, Aviva and Molly Rose-Williams are commiserating and getting psyched. Aviva chops Molly’s shoulders, pats down her back, gluts, hips. They switch. It’s Aviva’s turn. Reciprocal psych. As folks trickle to their seats and the siblings bounce and shake, pre-show messages set the scene: “Here come the athletes warming up on the pitch! These twins were invited to compete at the last minute today.” The announcers that will carry us through the show (Molly and Aviva’s pre-recorded voices recast as athletic commentators) invite us to cheer at any moment during the event. I, a willing participant, love that. In a track-runner-esque warm-up drill, the twins bop in unison around the stage. Their feet tangle accidentally. They exchange looks and giggle as they regain shared rhythm, voicelessly agreeing that “welp, tonight’s show could be wonky…” It’s one of many moments that punctuates the multipart world we’re in – simultaneously sitting in some far-off arena, cheering for a favorite team, and also right here in the theater, with familiar and favored people. As performers, they are both so completely sturdy and set (they have to be, as they will execute movement that seems to mock gravity). But also they flail, committed to their comedy, both with choreographed humor and with reflexive “winks” to us as they play in real time.
The pressure and excitement of the match is quickly revealed as the announcers relay the “bios” of each competitor. Molly left her last loss with her tail between her legs. Her confidence is about as stout as, well…a floppy changement and quivering horse lips. Aviva is a “silver brute. Headstrong. But lacking.” She always finishes matches in second place, but she is unwaveringly determined. We are meant to see the duo as honorable, tested, decently formidable. Yet there is welcomed folly in their hypothetical glory. Molly and Aviva gaudily flex, clap, overstate squished up game-faces, and pump their arms, hyping us up for the coming spectacle. “It’s almost game time folks!”
Round One. Molly and Aviva head to a 20 ft Chinese pole center stage. They introduce movement styles that will blanket the evening and will increase in complexity and risk. I am lured by the blend of aerial, acrobatic, sporty, and modern inspired movement. They are smooth and circular, floating and jumping around the pole, which is both something to climb and something like a narrow, cylindrical wall, off which they push and pull into back rolls onto the ground or over each other. Here and there licking arms reach in unison for another grab. This circusy intro is followed by a sweet hug and simple counterbalance in low light and hushed sound. They hold hands and lean carefully back. I am reminded how sophisticated, while modest, of an action it is. Ever flowing and ever sensitive, the negotiation of weight feels awfully emblematic of the greater activity of being together on a team.
Though not outlined by the Rose-Williams makers, I experienced the show in three more rounds, plus what can only be read as a half-time banana cabaret…a delicacy I will leave to your imagination and first-hand pleasure someday. The whole evening’s setup presented a constant negotiation of the game itself – complex physical feats – and the sisters’ management of the game. Lights and sound assisted the bounce from external to internal worlds: moving in and out of a bright, full wash of the stage for game time, to a dim blueish black for processing time. Soundscapes of stadium hollers and rock jams would switch to soft, coiling Spanish guitar, for example. The performers shifted so regularly from one to the other that I kept thinking about the proximity of the internal/external ventures in a situation like this: the emotional trial is never won. It is never not a part of the game. Skill and focus, our head, our heart, our relationship(s) are all in a ring of their own, jockeying for prime attention.
Round Two struck me as Star Spangled Snack Time, where Molly and Aviva’s knack for slapstick physical humor shines. The competitors stand in a ceremonial line. They feign honor for a distant flag, while not-so-sneakily passing a banana between them. I mean, players gotta refuel. Shortly, they release all podium etiquette and stuff their faces with something resembling corn nuts. Their snacking grows into a raucous, earnest game of trying to toss a nut into the other’s mouth, and we cheer when they get it. And cheer again when Aviva tosses one to an audience member who gets it! A condescending “interviewer” (played by Molly) interrupts their merriment by asking Aviva about buried doubts and about her obsessive ethos around winning. Aviva is able to squeeze out a couple meager responses between the food in her cheeks. But the sisters need to get back to the game. A whistle blows, the two shift into a promenade for the fans, blowing kisses, thumbing up, pointing up to the crowd after pounding their chests.
Ding! Round Three. Perfection and partnership. Molly and Aviva head back to the pole. They take turns nailing labyrinthine stunts with complicated, upside-down entries and dismounts. For this round, they have to stick each and every toe hold, hand placement, and leg crossing. After each trick, they step back to their “on deck” spots, waiting for either a bell (success! whew!) or a buzz (fuck.). A crux of the piece begins to surface. After multiple attempts, Molly doesn’t hit the marks. She gets increasingly down. The lights darken with her. It’s real pain and disappointment. She tried so hard. “I can’t do it.” Molly hunches forward, head down, and leaves the pole to manage this setback. Aviva follows and tenderly catches Molly’s heart, applying just enough pressure to send her back to upright. “No, I’m not good enough. I shouldn’t be here.” Down she goes, shoulders now shivering with theatrical cries. Aviva catches her heart again, righting her to stand. The tug-of-war for Molly’s wellbeing swells into foolery. Plunging down and boinging up goes Molly, faster and faster. She stretches her mouth into hyperbolic “crying shapes” as her shoulders bounce harder and higher. Aviva’s hand is less careful now, more obligatory, and she looks at us with an eye-rolling “seriously?” face. Aviva bounces Molly’s sobbing spine like a basketball. I am chuckling at its silly brilliance. They let us know we can laugh (though they are not right now), after our brief but stinging glimpse into the venomous self-measuring we all do at some point, in comparison to our partners, colleagues, former selves, or our own expectations.
Aviva shows us, not Molly, her frustration about this extra support, or maybe about how much time it’s taking. She needs to get back to the game. She lets out a full lipped, full cheeked breath. Her palms tightly swipe back across her scalp to scrub away her annoyance. Aviva needs Molly to compete. And Molly needs Aviva to regain composure. Molly is still down, her shoulders rounded, head drooping, arms crossed. Aviva knows what to do. She knows this person and this partnership. She walks over, takes out one of Molly’s tucked away hands, and molds it like play-doh into a fist. She pumps Molly’s elbow back near the side ribs and mutters in Molly’s ear – quietly enough to speak directly to Molly’s inner critic, but audibly enough for us to hear – “yesss.” It’s fabulous. Then the other arm. Peel it out of the slump, mold the play-doh fist, pump the elbow, whisper-shout “yesss!” Molly’s despondence ever so slightly releases its grip. Aviva continues. Molded fist, elbow pump, whisper shout “yeaah!” Fist, pump, shout, raise Molly’s arms overhead this time for “yaahhh!” Aviva appeals to the audience to join in this buttressing. Molly labors through some flexes. This recovery is serious work but, boy, Molly’s really starting to beam again. It’s giving fake-it-till-you-make-it, and it’s working on me too. Woo! You’ve got this! Eventually, our protagonists are jumping and growling and heading back to the pole. They eat up the pitch in a stunningly amoeba-like partner sequence around the pole, bellies invisibly tethered. Tethered. Then taking turns again, climbing and wrapping the pole in impressive configurations. They are encouraged. “This is why we train!” they say. “Always believe!” “Keep dreaming, cuz we’re amazing!” It’s true. And it’s droll and sarcastic. Sour even, scalding. I can feel both the stimulation and the artificiality of these familiar platitudes. That mixture, and the mixture of advanced and absurd movement, and the psychological punches thrown by the interviewers, work together to show the twins’ nimble ability to both celebrate and critique intensely competitive culture.
In the evening’s final moments, which I’ve deemed the Waning of Winning, prerecorded narratives flood the space. They are stories gathered from the Rose-Williams’ friends and community about experiences with competition, appetizing bits of memories and insights. As the stories float on, Molly and Aviva are coaxed down stage. At a snail’s pace, Molly creeps and climbs all over Aviva, cartwheeling, perching, sliding, and rolling. Eventually planted behind her sister, Molly sends her arms through Aviva’s and around the space they go, in an ambling, leaning sort of tango. It is beautifully interdependent, and seems to declare, “your arms are my arms. We lean on one another, and that is both necessary and precarious.” The pesky and persistent “interviewers” break up the moment again. That external eye. “Aviva” grills Molly this time about humiliation, messing up in front of people, “what makes you sure you can do this?” “Molly” jabs back with questions about obsessive dedication to a task. They snake back and forth with the mic, sparing with bitter inquiries about loss, success, and the meaning of a life so devoted to “just a game.” After this emotional slugfest, they finally have a rift. Molly actually leaves. Aviva stays to prove (to us? To herself?) just how much she belongs in this ring. She pulls off what seem to be the most complicated and confounding maneuvers yet on the pole. Crazy-ass tumbles and stalls, sideways leg whirls, upside down coils, catching herself inches from the ground. Equally forceful as it is fluid and assured. We gasp and cheer. But after a few moments, Aviva feels her oneness. She calls out for Molly, who returns, and with a grin, changes a boom box tape from applauding crowds to a sort of bugle charge. Molly’s departure, in terms of the arc of the story, feels bumpy and squeezed in at the end. And I think an opportunity is missed to explore the richness of return from being apart for the first time all evening. But it does feel something like reconciliation as, apprehensive but together, they step up to the final leg of the big game.
We don’t know the outcome of the match for our players, and of course we don’t need to. What lingers for me are the saliences of being in extensive partnership. Disappointment in ourselves in the face of our mates, concealed frustration, or herculean encouragement are all smushed inside the mutual benefit of continuation. To stay in “the game” we often have to sharply question, or step to the side for a bit, or sneak over a snack, or catch our other’s chest and ease them upright. We’ve got this.
Sarah Genta is a dancer, teacher, and writer. Sarah spent ten years performing with multiple Bay Area companies, writing about dancers and companies she relished most, and teaching in many Bay Area schools and studios, regularly at Shawl-Anderson Dance Center. Though she's relocated to Madison, Wisconsin, Sarah continues to dance with Andrew Merrell's Slack Dance. She is making new material with local dance artist, Elizabeth Luse, and she has begun working for Chell Parkins and the UW Dance Exchange to develop dance education programming in Wisconsin.
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