Dancers, software blend wit and satire
Artificial intelligence, programmed behaviors, privacy and other digital-age dilemmas are at issue in “Six Degrees of Freedom,” a beguiling world premiere dance theater work by Smith/Wymore Disappearing Acts. In 75 minutes that blended the playfully droll and gracefully haunting, the natteringly absurd and downright funny, this lighthearted troupe of five made a distinctive first impression at ODC Theater on Thursday, Nov. 30.
Lighthearted is not to say lightweight. In both its critique and appropriation of technology, “Six Degrees” imparted an insinuating wit and satirical insight.
Take the moment when dancers Stephen Buescher and James Graham breathlessly opened a packing box to discover a pair of smooth and cool-to-the-touch “rectangles” inside. Hoisting these strange wonders aloft, they were like aliens discovering cell phones for the first time. Moments later, they were using their devices’ cameras and the set’s wedge-shaped wall of white boxes to project their giant slavering tongues as if con-
Six Degrees of Freedom :8 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 2. ODC Theater, 3153 17th St., San Francisco. $30. (415) 863-9834, www. odc.dance/smithwymore.
joined. It was a deft gloss on how quickly and vividly screen tech can deliver up doses of pornography for any taste or whim.
A deliciously devised sequence later on began with an offbeat webcast, the two hosts manically saying and gesturing the names of the seasons (omitting “autumn” for some reason). Gradually, their semaphoric movements superseded speech to become a kind of autonomic language, at once machine-like and lyrical in its smooth repetitions.
Seamlessly, one of the real performers onstage was joined by a projected version of another member of the company climbing out of a box that both was and wasn’t the one the audience was seeing live. The material and the virtual shared an eerie paradoxical space. It was reminiscent of Bill Irwin’s memorable New Vaudeville stunts with late 20th century video screens.
The ostensible premise of “Six Degrees,” created and directed by co-artistic directors Sheldon Smith and Lisa Wymore, involves a computer system that has gone to sleep and dreamed up a group of four performers in a Pirandellian search for a reason to be. Bopping around the tiny space in the early going, they grasped at wisps of language and stuttering movements, with references to yoga, Facebook and a desperate compulsion to bite one’s fingernails.
Smith supplied some meta-theatrical commentary as the keeper of the system’s “instructions,” which is to say the script. A little of this was more than enough. Smith also noodled a bit at a piano when the eclectic recorded music (Chopin, techno-pop) wasn’t playing.
A fair portion of the choreography was task oriented. There were big boxes to be lifted and shifted about and a smaller one to be handed off among three dancers in a complex and semi-worshipful sequence. It was as if your FedEx men and women had turned their delivery of an Amazon parcel into a curbside ballet. Another transformation came in the gravely comic use of an aerosol spray can that lent a spritz of Snapchatty evanescence to a male duet.
For the record, the agile and facially expressive performers Buescher, Graham, Wymore and Rami Margronwere all a pleasure to watch, even when they were crawling toward an opening in the wall to make an escape.
Not all of “Six Degrees” was engaging or seemed to have much to do with the computer idea. But attention never lagged, with something intriguing sure to come along and develop soon enough. The performance software kept turning up mind-catching new features.