Hope Stone delivers ‘coolest news’ in good form.
Finger puppets, red high-top rain boots, vacuum cleaners and “Alice in Wonderland” collide in Hope Stone Dance Company’s “coolest news on planet earth, chapter 2.”
Choreographer Jane Weiner deftly mixes high-wattage movement and slower stop-and-go business against an hourlong soundtrack that bounces between kiddy piano renditions of “Itsy Bitsy Spider,” hip-hop and rock of various attitudes, mixed seamlessly by Firat Ozsoy.
Weiner loves child’s play; the trick is keeping it out of too-cute territory. She kind of sets herself up for that with the finger puppets and props that include baby chairs. What is the artistic point? Well, here’s one: The puppets seem to represent little voices in our heads, the ones that create doubt, mistrust and chaos.
Commissioned by Moody Center for the Arts to activate the wall-like art installation “Crêpe Paper Carpet,” by the Dutch art collective We Make Carpets, Weiner’s dance is about overcoming those voices to get to a better mindset. Getting over mental walls.
Hope Stone’s nine dancers are highly engaging, handsomely diverse, strong technicians and good actors. Occasionally they even sing and speak dialogue from “Alice in Wonderland,” with books as props. The carefully selected text references disagreements or differences of opinion.
Weiner sets up the premise with the opening solo, a tour de force of deconstructed hip-hop by Candace Tomkins, who conveys a dark and fearful, but also fierce, sensibility atop a tiny yellow chair. She repeats the solo near the end of the piece, on the other side of the installation, but delivers the movements with a completely altered tone, to different music — Elton John’s survival-spirited “Levon.”
In between, highlights include a number of powerful duets, the longest being an extended battle between La’Rodney Freeman and Kelsey Gibbs that ends with hard applause by the rest of the cast, as if they have just finished a competition. Freeman, who is black, also excels at stillness, holding his head between slices of white bread that he has pulled from a shiny black toaster — the show’s most literal political statement.
Jacquelyne Boe, Joshua DeAlba, Rachael Hutto, Travis Prokop, Donald Sayre and Brit Wallis also shine in duets and small groupings about people, or ideas, in uneasy dependence with each other. The dancers keep funny, deadpan faces when they are in more neutral territory.
I’m baffled by the piece’s title. Audience members were even asked to write down their “coolest news” and drop the paper into a fishbowl before the show. But the bowl disappeared, and no mention was made of its contents.
I would have been satisfied to see the show end with Tomkins’ second solo, but Weiner attempts an additional resolution: The dancers emerge from behind the wall, one at a time, to feel their way around the big artwork, then dash madly away from it, and to it. Meh.
But that’s not quite the end. Weiner ends with an inventive use of the space that the audience, which has moved from one side of the wall to the other along with the dancers, may not have even previously noticed.
Perfect or not, it’s good to see a Houston company tackling thoughtful material, in such good form. Performances continue through Aug. 19; seating is limited.