Running three consecutive weekends, Ice Dance International presented The Gig: After Moise and the World of Reason in North Adams, MA today as part of the Williamstown Theatre Festival. The all-male cast presented “Tennessee Williams live on an ice rink — a wholly original, site-specific performance about making a plan and leaving the world of reason.” Following in the tradition of movement research and collaborative site-specific choreography in modern dance, the program indicated physical experiments including falling and getting up, falling and sliding, collision, using each other’s weight to navigate space, unison movement, glide for the sake of glide, dragging, spiral and pivot. True to its billing, all these elements and more were included in this evening of dance. The concert did not seem to have a specific plot, but rather it presented a non-verbal mood and feeling, leaving the audience with the impression of an experience upon leaving.
The concert consisted of a series of movement works structured as an initial scene set to the reading of Tennessee Williams’ novel “Moise and the World of Reason,” followed by a series of dances to music with continued textual interludes. The dances involved combinations of group numbers, multiple-pairs and solos, all centered around the themes of the Tennessee Williams text: love, sensuality and gay life in 1970’s West Village. Tying this together was a series of disco-era sound tracks, props and movements. The performers’ standard costumes were colorful pants with disco-era shirts, but these were replaced by other costumes as needed.
The performers were all talented and experienced with figure skating and delivered a compelling performance that drew the audience in and left us wondering why it was over so quickly after one hour. Appropriately, the choreography was different from competition-style figure skating: it apparently arose from a collaborative process in which “anything goes” and movement research, contact improv and ensemble work were valued. Notable scenes included explorations of creative sliding, non-glide disco dancing, group arabesque spirals (including a beautiful forward inside edge spiral and a penchee spiral with the hands touching the ice), two skaters connected with their free legs, a grapevine, a drag performance, love and passion, love and fighting, a precision skating line, group partnering, beautiful long glides, whirling dervishes, and plenty of smooth two-foot skating. The evening finished off with a captivating performance by Rohene Ward. In among it all was a sprinkling of traditional competition-style tricks including an outside spread eagle pushed over on the inside edges, a double Axel jump, a few split-style jumps including falling leaf and split flip, and plenty of advanced spins. Twizzles were used liberally in the choreography, maybe too liberally. These were all strong points that made the concert fun and compelling to watch.
The concert came across as a form of bold experimental theater, and everyone involved should be commended for taking risks to present something unique to the audience. But it also had some weak points.
I could not focus on words and movement simultaneously: ultimately I tuned out the words and just watched the movement. I don’t think I missed anything because there was no specific plot. I do question how using spoken text advanced the choreography; a brief 1-2 paragraph description in the program could have served a similar purpose, allowing the movement to speak for itself — either in silence, to music or to other sounds.
The evening began with a single small circle mysteriously scribed into the center of the ice. Two skaters came out and used two scribes to draw five figure 8’s, radiating out in 5-way symmetry from a smaller circle at the center. The performers then opened the concert (to dialog) wearing long skirted overcoats reminiscent of Victorian-era skating dress. They skated combined figures along the scribed circles: Forward Outside 8, Backward Outside 8, Forward Outside 8 with 3-turns, and Forward Outside and Inside Loops, and also side-by-side figures in offset Figure 8’s. Skaters were well synchronized; and thrillingly, did not collide as they simultaneously entered tight quarters on the small central circle. But numerous technical problems, not acceptable beyond beginner level skaters of figure artwork, made the segment come across as amateurish and inconsistent with the high level of quality for the rest of the evening; excess snow production set the stage for a later scene full of dragged toe picks; and the use of scribes suggested inexperience as well. The use of low-angle lighting, which made the tracings easily visible, could have allowed the audience to experience the magic of watching skilled skaters create beautiful and original figure artwork before their eyes. But instead it highlighted the numerous shortcomings in execution of simplistic designs and showcased the mess left behind on the ice. The decision to include this scene in spite of the technical problems was an unforced director’s error, putting the performers and the discipline of figure artwork in a poor light and creating an underwhelming first impression. In summary, the free skating was world class but the audience can see more interesting and exciting figure performances elsewhere.
Apart from problems in execution, the use of figures was a missed opportunity. The on-ice use of scribes placed the figures firmly in the “school figures” era of figure skating (1897 — 1990); but what does school figure culture have to do with 1970’s West Village gay culture and how would the typical audience member associate any meaning to a scribe? The figures scene would have been more interesting had it drawn from the rich movement language of English Combined Figures (England) and Figure & Fancy Skating (North America), as suggested by the costumes. Combined figures in particular focus on interactions between skaters. Used creatively and executed with skill, the scene could have helped establish relationships between characters and moved the drama forward while delighting the audience with the creation of beautiful artwork on the ice before their eyes — rather than a seemingly disconnected academic exercise mired in a mess of incoherent scribbles.
The performance avoided the familiar choreographic tropes of competition figure skating and limited the use of large tricks. That was positive. However, an opportunity was missed in that the skaters did not adequately explore other forms of figure skating movement. Counter-rotation of any kind, counter / rocker turns, backward loops and backspins — standard moves in figure skating — were absent or nearly absent. Also missing were toe pick pirouettes; advanced “kicked” figure moves such as beaks and cross-cuts, toe pick pirouettes; creative “Gary Beacom” type moves such as inside (“cross”) Mohawks / Choktaws, the “Beacom Zombie,” forward outside loop jumps, axel jumps from two-foot crouched takeoffs, etc; and the entire menagerie of small jumps from the repertoire of Fancy Skating such as flying 3-turns (similar to ballet front-to-back fouette), flying Ina Bauers, forward-landing flying counter jumps, etc. The result was an over-use of two-foot skating, three-turns, twizzles and spins, with choreography that at times struggled to fill the hour with adequate variety. Other work from Ice Dance International involves a spectacular synchronized two-person double Axel jump, but nothing like that was part of this evening. We also did not get to see much close partnered ice dance, a missed opportunity for an LGBT-focused work to upend audiences’ heteronormative expectations. We did get to see a nice moonwalk and split-drops.
In spite of its shortcomings, Moise was a fun and compelling piece of experimental theater that successfully left the audience with a visceral sense of the world described by Tennesse Williams on which it was inspired. The ensemble worked well together. It would be interesting to see where they could go in the future with more time working together and more direct input from related movement languages including ice dance, modern dance, contact improv and Figure & Fancy Skating.