For the third week of the REDCAT NOW Festival, three final artists presented their new works. I was able to tune in to their livestream offering, and I appreciated that they offer this accessible option, which ran smoothly. The works, presented by Luna Izpisua Rodriguez, jeremy de’jon guyton, and Lu Coy, seemed to share a theme of time: in guyton and Rodriguez’ works, the past and present coexisted and interacted, and in Coy’s work part of an old Nahuatl fable was retold and brought to life. All leaned much more towards physical theater than standalone dance, and the success of the movement varied, with guyton’s integration and creativity of movement being the most effective overall.
REDCAT NOW Festival Week Three – “Open House” by Luna Izpisua Rodriguez – Photo by Angel Origgi.
The first work, presented by Luna Izpisua Rodriguez, was called “Open House.” This piece featured a large cast, including two incredibly well-behaved babies. The theatrical piece brought the audience into the fever dream of a realtor selling a foreclosed home. In the prelude to the piece, a train noise came over the speakers and the lights flickered up, first revealing the set of furniture pieces covered in plastic. When the lights came again, there were a few dancers, and then more the next time the lights came up. This seemed to represent the accumulation of ghosts that inhabit a space over time.
REDCAT NOW Festival Week Three – “Open House” by Luna Izpisua Rodriguez – Photo by Angel Origgi.
As the piece progressed, more and more of these ghosts haunted the space, and often their dialogue of memories past overlapped with the tightly wound realtor and his interactions with potential buyers. It was confusing to follow, but it felt like that was the point as it brought to life the realtor’s descent into insanity. The softer, automated-feeling movements of the ghosts, especially as they paced in and out of the space, seemed to distinguish them from the present day realtor and his sharp, thrashing tics. The movement direction gave more clarity to the contrast between past and present, and the performers were willing to fully commit to each moment physically, whether they were slowly pacing, melting in a dining chair, gyrating with a partner on a couch, or running around the space. Aside from that, there wasn’t much use of dance within the performance.
REDCAT NOW Festival Week Three – “Open House” by Luna Izpisua Rodriguez – Photo by Angel Origgi.
One memorable moment was when plastic, like that which covered some of the furniture, was pulled over some of the people. It felt like it represented an attempt to contain and move on from the past, treating these real people and their past lives as mere objects. While I wouldn’t have picked up on this without the program note, I enjoyed the idea that a space is forever haunted by those that inhabited it, and how we tie so much identity to ownership of land and property – “on how losing land can feel like losing self.” I like this concept and wish I had felt a bit more of it through the performance itself. The performance was effective in immersing the audience into the devolving mindset of the main character, but I would love to see more exploration of this driving idea.
REDCAT NOW Festival Week Three – “notes on building a foundation” by jeremy de’jon guyton – Photo by Angel Origgi.
The second work, “notes on building a foundation” was performed and created by jeremy de’jon guyton and was a live mixed-media scrapbook of guyton’s exploration into some of his family archives. On half of the stage, there was a small set up of TVs and radios, glowing tubes, and long hanging fabric sheets. To me, the intentional smaller space within the big space of the stage seemed to represent a basement or small room that guyton was set up in as he researched. The audio for the performance included static and radio sounds, as well as the voiceovers from various interviews with family members. As the voice fist spoke, guyton moved in the shadows, facing away from the audience and disappearing behind the curtains. The first time guyton danced more fully and inhabited the full stage space, he danced along with an old project video of him dancing as a child, and it was a fun moment.
REDCAT NOW Festival Week Three – “notes on building a foundation” by jeremy de’jon guyton – Photo by Angel Origgi.
The final sections of this work were the most compelling emotionally. First was a time-hopping monologue, where guyton spoke into a microphone and erratically seemed to change characters and situations. His whole body was involved and eventually things reached a climax as he screamed and fell to the floor, before shifting into a calmer state ending with more poetic lines about “remembering remembrances” or “remembering the last time I remembered.” I also loved a section near the end of the piece where guyton pushed the TV around the stage to gospel-sounding music, spinning and melting and sliding his feet mesmerizingly as he circled the space. As he left the TV and walked up a diagonal, it felt like we were now seeing present day guyton walking with a confidence that came from knowing his history. I didn’t quite understand what happened next as guyton brought out a tub and rubbed some sort of dark liquid over his upper body, but I did enjoy the final bittersweet voiceover where a woman mused that she hoped someday to see his, presumably guyton’s, performances. This piece felt deeply personal, and I enjoyed witnessing guyton take and share this journey into his ancestry.
REDCAT NOW Festival Week Three – “Becoming the Moon” by Lu Coy – Photo by Angel Origgi.
The final offering was Lu Coy’s “Becoming the Moon,” which was billed as “an opera that illuminates the Florentine Codex’s account of Tecciztecatl—a gender-expansive Mexica moon deity.” I really enjoyed the living singing and music, which mixed together live and electronic music, as well as the graphics that were projected as part of the short opera. Simple props were used effectively to create cool visuals like a moment where a dancer poured water on a mirror and this in turn reflected ripples onto his white costume. To conclude the piece, the dancer held the mirror in front of his face showing his transformation into the feminine moon deity and creating an eclipse-like effect as the mirror reflected the darkness from the audience section.
REDCAT NOW Festival Week Three – “Becoming the Moon” by Lu Coy – Photo by Angel Origgi.
There were various dance sections incorporated into the piece, and I felt like there were interesting broad ideas about when to use dance in the narrative, but the movement itself was a bit simple and at times melodramatic for the more intimate space. I especially would have enjoyed seeing more play with the transition from masculine to feminine in the movement quality, as the vocabulary before and after the transition did not show much of a shift.
This was my first time at REDCAT’s NOW Festival, and I appreciated the fresh stories and experimental projects that blended text, movement, visual media, and music onstage. Though the pieces differed in how fully they realized their ambitious ideas and incorporated dance, I enjoyed the thought-provoking themes the artists explored.
To learn more about REDCAT’s season, please visit their website.
Written by Rachel Turner for LA Dance Chronicle.
Featured image: REDCAT NOW Festival Week Three – “Becoming the Moon” by Lu Coy – Photo by Angel Origgi.
