 |
 |
 |
|||||
|
| ABOUT TRaC |
Dance TRaC Winter 2004
Butterflies From My Hand Donna Uchizono's most recent concoction, Butterflies From My Hand, is extremely captivating but also completely ambiguous. At the moment the audience entered the auditorium, they were immediately part of the production, a long red ribbon connecting the stage to the ceiling above the last row of seats. The movements throughout the short piece could all be interpreted with double meanings, which added to the ambiguity. The movements primarily conveyed either feelings of grief or sexual experience. The piece's main theme was letting go and moving on, and it especially concentrated on the emotions and feelings experienced as a direct result of September 11th. The repeated embracing and sobbing in different positions, both vertically and horizontally in different places on the stage, added to this theme but they could also clearly be interpreted as extremely sexual. Donna Uchizono craftily conveyed the grief that Americans felt after September 11th versus the joy Osama bin Laden felt by comparing bin Laden to a spider and Americans to a fly entangled in the spider's silky web. At the end of this particular sequence, the "fly" got its revenge by choking the "spider" in its own web, which sounds mildly familiar. The theme of letting go was also directly conveyed at the very beginning of the piece, which showed a powerful image of a woman cutting herself down from a red cloth that supported her. The movement from the moment the woman cut the red cloth and henceforth was static, with little interaction between two or more dancers; however, the performance was captivating and it was difficult to look away even for a moment. The costumes were wisely chosen. All the dancers wore shades of red, purple or orange, which seemed to add to the idea of nature conveyed in the title of the piece. The insect and bird noises that occurred spontaneously during the piece also added to this idea. At times, the choice of music was almost as random as the movements that accompanied it; however, the random movements made the performance unpredictable, which was one of its best qualities. There were many parts, however, that seemed inappropriate and awkward in relation to the subject matter of grief and letting go. The last half of the performance seemed to be continually reaching a climax; however, the ending was not disappointing and it seemed to end at an appropriate place, both physically and in terms of story development. Overall, the performance was a success because its themes of grief and anguish were strongly portrayed through the movements, costumes and powerful images.
|
|
