Dancers supply cure for toxic masculinity
Nothing is off limits to Christy Funsch and Nol Simonse.
Rather than put value judgments on their inspirations, the San Francisco postmodern choreographers follow them headlong down artistic rabbit holes to see what’s there, play with them and mold them into something new. When they resurface, they offer their creations to anyone curious enough to sit down and watch.
Curiosity is required, and a willingness to ride along — as they get naked or wall each other inside stacks of bricks, or flow through abstract balances and embraces that could pass for canonical modern dance but always lead to unexpected places. Rigorous intention, integrity and unapologetic originality are ever present.
Their latest experiment, “Golden Bull,” which opened Friday, Nov. 2, at Dance Mission Theater and ran through the weekend, is something of a double dare for Simonse and Funsch. The close friends and frequent collaborators have created lots of solos, duets and shared ensembles over their self-described 18-year “dance marriage,” but this is their first co-directed piece and their first with an all-male cast.
It also features their first commissioned score by Aaron Gold, whose hour-long electronic trance arcs from meditative ambience to house music to the isolated rhythm of a heartbeat.
Meant to unpack masculine archetypes, male vulnerability and intimacy, “Golden Bull” is a complicated, corporeal antidote to the culture of toxic masculinity. As the audience files into the black-box theater, Hien Huynh, Rogelio Lopez, Andrew Merrell, Victor Talledos and Erik Wagner are already immersed in a ritual sequence of floor rolls, arm-in-arm huddles and tableaux accented with beaded talismans and strategically placed brass balls.
From there on, the choreography underplays the dancers’ virtuosity to an almost pedestrian level, so no one gets to hide behind distracting tricks. Yet while kick-ball-changes and rock-steady hip swivels look offhand, the simplicity is deceptive. A cast of five means that when pairings form there is always an odd man out, and Simonse and Funsch weave an intricate web as they play with spatial and human relations. Harry Rubeck’s choreographed lighting adds leagues of shadowy depth.
An early solo by Wagner has Simonse written all over it: grounded yet striving heavenward, strikingly articulate and contorted to grotesquerie as he lurches like a newborn colt on his fists and balletic demipointe.
Toward the end of the hour, Wagner’s duet with Huynh seems all Funsch, with deliberate, synchronized walking and hand gestures that echo her tai chi practice.
The journey between those poles is rife with biblical allusions and pagan invocations. The titular bull derives from the golden calf, and the bull’s mature masculinity is overt in Lopez’s solo of ecstatic undulations and in Merrell’s anchoring power when he lifts and inverts Talledos.
Throughout, the artists struggle with the repercussions of masculine tropes and societal expectations; their touches are tender when Merrell is baptized on a velvet altar, then fleetingly romantic when he and Lopez partner in a tango-esque dip.
If “Golden Bull” feels a bit overlong, it’s worth the wait for Talledos’ climactic solo — supplicating, hesitant but insistent, and bare-souled.