OF OUR REMNANTS (Olive Prince Dance): 2015 Fringe review 30

olive-prince-of-our-remnantsPresented by Olive Prince Dance, in collaboration with Carrie Powell and Kaitlin Chow, OF OUR REMNANTS originates from a passage in Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera, a description of a abandoned house. Wear and tear are obvious themes; more subtle themes are the play of memory and need in old or broken objects. Powell greets each audience-member as they enter and gives them a piece of paper with a drawing. So spoken word and movement in the work are drawn from patterns of memory and familiarity. The dancers carry each other; they fall, sliding across the floor. In OF OUR REMNANTS, the utilitarian object is one of comfort, and comfort is an act of avoidance.

Chairs are used as props and piled broken and whole along the corners of the room. The coherence in the decay of these common objects is mirrored in the coherence of the dancing troupe: everyone looks very similar.The idea of “our” in OF OUR REMNANTS, presents a specific exploration of the image of traditional domestic femininity and its degradation. The dancers represent the trapped domestic female, the hysterical woman, twisting and fitting into the spaces of the room. Dancers perform with clear intention. Their knowledge of the space and each other allows contact to be swift, intricate, and vulnerable. The stated goal of the piece—to explore a literary description of an abandoned house as a painterly image—is beautifully met. [The Iron Factory, 118 Fountain Street] September 9-12, 2015; fringearts.com/of-our-remnants.

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