Tiny, unseen world comes to life
Quasimondo uses dance to transport
Two years ago and just in time for the holidays, Quasimondo Milwaukee Physical Theatre brought us the memorable “Buboes,” which began with a royal court being undone by the plague, arriving in the guise of three clowning actors who emerged from hiding to turn the world upside down.
“Buboes” came to mind Saturday night, as I watched the opening performance of Quasimondo’s “Animolecules.” Directed by Brian Rott and Jenni Reinke, this latest devised piece from Quasimondo is being billed as “an original dansci theatre work of microscopic proportions.”
As things get underway, 17th-century microscope pioneer Antonie van Leeuwenhoek — embodied by Reinke — is about to see his own world turned topsy-turvy.
A draper fiddling with lenses in an effort to better assess the thread in his shop’s fabrics, Leeuwenhoek instead discovered the unicellular organisms he dubbed animalcules.
As Reinke’s Leeuwenhoek sits on his bed, peering by candlelight through the looking glass, Grieg’s aptly chosen “In the Hall of the Mountain King” builds in the background, commemorating another story in which a big person discovers a world of little creatures clambering all around him.
Here, cilia from microbiotic organisms begin appearing from behind a wall, before those microbes emerge full force just as Grieg’s iconic piece reaches its climax, accompanied by Dave Rasmussen on violin.
Wearing aqua-blue tops suggesting the teeming worlds Leeuwenhoek discovered in a drop of water, dancers Chancie Cole, Tom Hjelmgren, Kelsey Lee, Jessi Miller, Don Russell and Kate Slezak swim into view, spending the ensuing two hours (with intermission) reminding us that who we think we are is composed of and controlled by much that we never see.
There’s surely much in this performance that I didn’t see and therefore missed; even the rudimentary microbiology explored here doesn’t always translate into dance, or at least didn’t for me — notwithstanding sculpted study aids such as arterial walls, through which “micronauts” go exploring (set design and props by Bridget Cookson and David George).
But as I watched dancers
become cells dividing, viruses invading and enzymes catalyzing — frequently represented alongside strikingly evocative puppets created by Andrew Parchman and Julia Teeguarden — I had ample opportunity to reflect on how little we control of who we are, given the pitched battles taking place within us, involving creatures we rarely acknowledge.
To be sure, we can wash our hands (parodied here in one vignette) and watch what we eat and drink (covered in a second vignette).
But try as we might to live right and sleep well, there’s no guarantee we won’t be changed into something else entirely by morning (yes, Kafka’s “Metamorphosis” gets a workout, with Lee as the cockroach). As Quasimondo regularly reminds us, nothing is ever quite what it seems to be on the surface of everyday life.