Structural Patterns

Imagine this crazy, detailed mess of small motors, gator clamps, cables, seemingly fragile steel armature constituting a kinetic sculpture set against a beaming light that projects elements of the sculpture onto a backdrop. These sculptures are part of the staging or more appropriately actors of Verdensteatret’s performance titled “And All the Question Marks Started to Sing” which was at Dance Theater Workshop this past week. As a performance, I hated the piece and wanted to leave ten minutes into it, but I would have very much enjoyed the work as an installation. I loved the kinetic sculptures and portions of the interactions between the sculptures and animations projected onto the walls, but as a performance, it was painfully dull.

I enjoy experimental work, but if I’m expected to sit in a seat for nearly an hour, I expect to be given something that I can follow, get lost in, or will take me somewhere. There were elements of “And All the Question Marks Started to Sing” which were exciting, but as a whole it seemed disjointed. There was no anchor or narrative that allowed me to follow the work as a staged linear performance. Perhaps it was merely presented in the wrong venue, rather than a seated stage performance, the piece seems to be produced for a gallery or museum environment in which the audience may come and go as well as walk through the staging. Better yet, I would have loved to have interacted with the sculptures and manipulated the playing of the animations and sound.

There were four actors that worked with the sculptures to seemingly manipulate video and animation projected onto the walls as well as the sound in the environment. There were a couple spoken portions, but they were not translated into English, so I had no idea what the actors were saying.