The Territory Between
When we reflect on our sense of identity, do we focus on what’s memorable and definite–on what we identify as formative experiences? Can we gain insight into ourselves by observing what we’re ambivalent about? Or is our identity more fluid: does our response to the ever-changing present moment reveal what’s fundamental in our natures? Such questions came to mind while viewing the final weekend of four in Fluid Measure Performance Company’s “The Territory Between” series on movement and the spoken word, featuring three works by the company and three improvisational solos by guest artist Simone Forti.
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Fluid Measure–Kathleen Maltese, Donna Mandel, and Patricia Pelletier–uses a larger palette than Forti, adding costumes, props, video, and lighting to words and movement to create vignettes that emphasize inner experience and exploration. Pelletier’s skillful writing, filled with poetic imagery and metaphor, is wonderfully coupled with dancing that’s both sensually affecting and clearly intentioned: their rich pieces have a profound emotional impact because they merge thought, physicality, and imagination. Moments of humor and irony lighten even the darker works.
The second half of the evening featured Forti’s improvisations, which suggest that moment-to-moment interactions between one’s intellect, the environment, and one’s internal sensations are the source of identity. In Dance Forti works only with movement, accompanied at times by a sparse saxophone soundscape by Jon Gibson. Like a surfer picking waves to ride, she seems to scan her inner sensations for possible candidates from which to develop movement themes. One after another, gestures, tactile explorations, movement qualities, and patterns of breathing arise and subside, sometimes separated by stillness and other times piling up quickly. At times Forti passes through possibilities faster than a bored television viewer with a remote control. At other times she demonstrates a Zen-like concentration, nurturing every moment, feeling every nuance, leaving no avenue unexplored.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photo/William Frederking.
