Review: Inside My Walls by Ishida Dance Company
by David Glen Robinson

Inside My Walls is indescribably beautiful. So thoroughly apt, and so difficult to convey in words. The onslaught of imagery and the feelings that ride along with it hurt as much as they arouse, but no one wants them to stop. And the dark at the corner of the stage looms as the portal to our memories of loss and pain. Out of it come contesting siblings, lovers, workers, and visitors from beyond. We watch the stories they dance with a grain of fear in a bushel of fascination, both in front of our eyes and far, far behind them. Contortionism and gymnastics seem to hold sway over perfected technique. The combination launches us into those reveries. Ishida connects with us in our minds, and we enjoy her company.

 

Ishida Dance's Austin premiere of Inside My Walls took place at the St. Andrews School Dell Fine Arts Center in far west Austin. As with many events nowadays, the show hybridizes media and artistic forms in pursuit of the new. The forms in Inside My Walls include dance, theatre, music, and installation art. Intensely realized lighting and costuming might be thrown in there as well, but high-energy contemporary dance and ballet lie restless and snarling at the core of choreographer Brett Ishida’s work.

 

Inside My Walls offered an evening-length performance of four dances, two created by Brett Ishida, two by guest choreographers Stephen Shropshire and Andonis Fonaidakis. Lighting designs were creatively adapted for the Dell Fine Arts Center space by Hudson Davis, but credit for the lighting was given to him and the choreographer of each piece. This suggests but does not fully explain the superior quality and integration of lighting and movement in the pieces. Such designs are rarely seen in Austin dance. The four pieces of the show were all vignetted by dark shadows at the corners and ceiling of the stage. This overall framing of the pieces created them as a set although choreographed by three separate artists and with considerable internal diversity.

 

 

The first piece, “When shall we three meet again” came out of Ishida’s memories of her three aunts. It got off to a rocky start, with multiple startovers after a few seconds of light. There may have been issues with recalcitrant lighting or musical equipment (all the music in the show was piped in), but we may never know. The brief images were analogous to rock drummers' fill music. Once the main sequence of movement launched, Ishida’s fascination with triads became apparent, along with her high-energy ballet technique. It included references to the Three Muses in Shakespeare and Renaissance art, and to the Three Witches in MacBeth. The perfection of the dancers' technique and the drama of the lighting design were incredibly beautiful and set the tone for the entire dance.

 

 

The second piece, “Horizons,” was by Andonis Foniadakis. An extremely sensual duet, it was memorable for having as much non-contact dance as contact. The original music by Julian Tarride was notable for incorporating sound effects, including a loud boom. Lighting combined with costumes. Costume fabrics were gauzy and filmy, and the general backlighting allowed the dancers’ bodies to show through in shimmery glimpses. This was another piece of high quality by an international contemporary, complementing the work of Brett Ishida .

 

“Schubert Songs” followed, a piece by an American choreographer Stephen Shropshire, who lives and works in the Netherlands. Part of Shropshire’s bio material in the programme described him as a dance researcher. That hit the marley as a lot of shapes while dancers sat on the stage or danced in their ensemble of five at a prevailing andante, or walking, pace. Shropshire’s intellectuality was at the fore throughout the piece. Costumes, designed by Shropshire, were gray-over-gray street wear that blended into the plain background. The soundtrack music was several songs by Franz Schubert. An enlivening moment was when two dancers sat in different shapes on the stage near each other and gazed upstage, not at each other. It was a moment that looked like two people on a casual date. It did not fit the piece, but it created a charming touch.

 

 

The title piece, “Inside My Walls” came last in the program and was enacted on a constructed set—a small apartment  bounded and demarcated by stacks of newspapers. That, and a bed, open clothing rack, desk, and lamps defined the space and provided the imagery. Ishida gave a curtain speech before this piece (as she did before the others) inviting us to experience her walls and the need to pushing beyond them. Daniel Domenech danced the Protagonist, the apartment dweller; and Georgia Greene danced the role of the Visitor. Audience erss membdefined the nature of the Visitor in their own minds. Other than the curtain speech, the piece had no spoken words at all.

 

The magic started when the Protagonist got out of bed and made fast small movements as he prepared for a normal day. He exited and returned several times. The Visitor showed up when he left, entering through the clothing rack. This was the structure, or screenplay, of the piece, except for the end. Indescribable beauty happened there. Georgia Greene, in skin-tight, flesh-colored costume, showed the flexibility of the best contortionists, partying like a fairy in someone’s apartment. Daniel Domenech matched Greene in gymnastic skill while dancing “what’s going on here?” Ishida’s ballet, with its many sources, wove a larger but attractive mystery while our imaginations wrestled with her strange but tantalizing walls.

 

Ishida Dance brings a higher level of professionalism to Austin dance, and we welcome the vast tutorial the company gives by generous example, from which many Austin artists may benefit. Audience satisfaction is a given. Ishida Dance also seems to pre-load something Austin groups are only now (not too late, one hopes) coming to realize: private funding provides a more secure financial footing than strings-attached government grants that can be arbitrarily removed. Ishida Dance is a 501(c)(3) non-profit.

 

Events in the first half of 2025 have seen cutbacks in plans and performances in Austin arts organizations of all modes. Could this disprove the Austin sobriquet “Athens on the Colorado?” Ishida Dance plans to base in Texas, co-locating in Houston and Austin. Might this be the dawn of a new day?

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Inside My Walls
by Ishida, drawing on Haruki Murakami
Ishida Dance Company

June 19 - 21, 2025

Dell Fine Arts Center at St. Andrews

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