A dance performance on a frozen lake under a moonless and starless sky explored the connection between movement and language Saturday.
As part of the Great Northern Festival, choreographer Morgan Thorson presented "Untitled Night," a salute to winter and the night sky, on Silver Lake in Silverwood Park, northwest of the Twin Cities. Dancers were dressed in fluorescent snow suits designed by Dakota Blankenship and Kristen McCoy.
The dance began on the far side of the lake from where the audience gathered. A train of lights could be seen moving toward the performance area, as the sound of trumpets (played by Hollyn Fellows and Mike Valois) improvised notes from two separate locations across the lake. Soon, the lights were revealed, attached to performers who danced their way toward the audience.
A handful of lights were set up on the ice, creating a dim setting in Nao Nagai's lighting design. As the nine performers danced, they described their movements into microphones. The microphones were set up near the lights, so that the best lit moments were when someone was speaking.
The performance became an exercise in seeing and not seeing dance. The audio descriptions had a way of demystifying the movements that made up this particular work of contemporary choreography. It also had the effect of making the piece not so much a performance, but a rite.
Audio description has been around for some 45 years, but its use in a dance context is more recent. Last year, Heather Shaw's dance documentary, "Telephone," brought considerable awareness to the form's use in dance.
In Thorson's work, the audio descriptions offered a guide to the intricacies of the movement. It informed the audience of the names of the performers and what they were doing, using words like "drop," "bounce," "rise" and "pivot." The spoken descriptions, created by Jay Afrisando, also employed more creative words to describe the movement like "boomerang," and it veered into poetic language at times.
The sound, too, offered moments perhaps not of narrative but of world-building. Recorded audio and sound created by the performers evoked machines one moment and balloons being deflated at another. Text referenced life and death. The sound also continually rooted the dance in its outdoor setting, from the sound of birds to scraping of cleats against the ice.
Group dances, duets and solo movement marked the first part of the piece. Large gestures, like a dancer circling around the performance area, stood out amongst more subtle movements that were harder to see.
The homage paid to the beauty of winter and the mystery of the night sky took place in an unsettlingly warm January, likely caused by the rising ocean temperatures. In fact, a thin layer of water emerged on top of the ice over the course of the performance — perhaps from the warmth of so many bodies on the lake. The water served as a disquieting omen, even amid the overall wonder of the natural setting's ecology.
Near the end of the choreography, Thorson employed synchronous movements to a funky beat. The work became more revelrous. Ultimately, the piece felt like a celebration of the indecipherable awe one feels toward the natural world around us, keenly felt in the cold air of a winter night.
