Web Search powered by YAHOO! SEARCH  
share
email
print
font size
options
 


When dancing becomes electric

It was trippy, techie, forward moving, exciting and very cool. Every so often, Live Arts/Fringe offers a dance show that isn't just experimental but revolutionary - as Australia's Chunky Move company was in Mortal Engine at the Wilma Theater Thursday night.

The piece features six dancers, a tech team and a setup that includes infrared cameras, projectors, computers and lasers. The effect is extraordinary: The dancers control the lighting, and sometimes the electronic music and sounds, with their bodies.

On a raked platform set at a 15-degree slope toward the audience, the dancers painted pools of shadow and light around their bodies, almost as one might control the colors of a mood ring with body heat. Their fingers feathered out around them as they lay on the floor and hyper-extended their arms and legs. Three or four dancers grouped together and scurried across the stage like an animal. A section of the platform rose up to become a wall, and a pair danced against it as though they were in bed and the audience was watching from above.

Fog was blown onto the stage, and dancers manipulated walls of green lasers that stretched out into the audience. Depending on where you were sitting, you might feel as if you were in a chamber of light, or outside looking into one. Between dances, the audience saw psychedelic light shows.

With nearly every aspect of the show created in real time, each performance is different. I'd love to see it again.


Live Arts/Philly Fringe

For more information on shows, go to www.livearts-fringe.org or call 215-413-1318.


4 and 8 p.m. today. The Wilma Theater, 265 S. Broad St. $30.

  • Top Jobs
  • Top Homes
  • Top Cars
 
SEARCH JOBS
East Falls


$215,000
3433 CRESSON ST
East Falls


$325,000
3343-45 CONRAD ST ##401
SEARCH CARS

Buy Inquirer, Daily News & Philly merchandise here including:

 
Books
 
Movies
 
Page Reprints
 
Photo Licensing
 
Photos