Review: Anthropocene by Performa/Dance
by David Glen Robinson

The vision of Anthropocene addressed in part the great extinctions that have punctuated Earth history as far back as 425 million years ago. Ordovician—Silurian—Permian—Triassic—Cretaceous. Each of the die-offs claimed the extinctions of more than 90% of lspecies iving at each of those times. All of us, including the elephants, the whales, the scorpions, the ants, and the redwoods, are descendant survivors of catastrophe. Some authorities have declared our time, the now, to be the epoch of humanity, termed the Anthropocene. We dominate the planet and continue to drive animal and plant species into extinction, perhaps finishing the process with ourselves. The vocal talents of Kelsey Oliver took us through these sobering reflections in a large show-and-tell section with moving stage pieces, lighting sets, and comedy bits.

 

Anthropocene says hello to the world as a cultural and philosophical event that escapes the confines of performative art. To a first-time, flat-footed observer, the only question is “What is this?” If they or anyone else merely relaxes into the stream of percepts and floats to the isle of perception, they will be rewarded with an accessible, brilliant, and generous discourse on life and death on earth through time. Lots of time.

 

Sounds big, but jump in.

 

Performa/Dance celebrates its tenth year of existence with Anthropocene. Jennifer Hart has served as co-artistic director from the very first with Edward Carr, recently retired, as co-artistic director. In the last few years, the team has produced standout ballets, including Bluegrass Junction, Mad Scene, and last year’s Pivot, a composite work incorporating Hart’s groundbreaking Finding Alice (in Wonderland). Core collaborators in Anthropocene include Alexandra Bassiakou Shaw, Alexa Capareda, and Kelsey Oliver.

 

Austin Ventures Studio at Ballet Austin serves as the first-class home venue of Performa/Dance. Stephen Pruitt took the reins of technical director from the recently deceased Steven Myers to whom Anthropocene was dedicated, along with dancer Erica Saucedo.

 

 

Co-collaborators in movement and dialogues on stage were Angel Blanco, Cellise Brown, Alexa Capareda, Jairus Carr, Arnaldo Hernandez, Aida Hernandez Reyes, Taryn Lavery, Clay Moore, Kanami Nakabayashi, Kelsey Oliver, and Tikiri Shapiro. This cast worked hard but skillfully to create the visions of Anthropocene. Some took one step out of their comfort zones to learn and speak monologues and dialogues usually reserved for actors, written by librettist Alexandra Bassiakou Shaw. Their accomplishments were impressive in addition to their mastery of ballet-based and contemporary dance technique. These are skill sets in combination that few actors have. This was a rare and masterful cast.

 

Technical collaborators whose work was seen on stage in the design fields were Stephen Pruitt, as mentioned, who also served as co-scenic designer and lighting designer; Henna Chou created the sound design; Kelsey Oliver was the costume designer and co-scenic designer; Edward Carr served as graphic designer and technical assistant; Adam Coronado worked as lighting operator; Rayna Sevilla was the audio engineer; and Susan Harkey managed the stage. Assistants to the designers worked hard with them as a team to create seamless design sequences and imagery. 

 

 

As with much contemporary dance, the work is broken into sections, strikingly distinct in lighting, costumes, sound, and movement but blended in the transitions among them, subtly enough that it was often difficult to discern the emerging difference and know when to retool one’s mindset. But again, relax into it. The central parts of the sections tended to be mentally and emotionally lumiscent, especially approaching the end, when Performa/Dance unleashed its core talents in full power to describe its loving look at the earth, the oceans, and humanity.

 

Performa/Dance’s superpower is love.

  

We only have the now, and Performa/Dance gave us a selected summary of what we are doing with the earth. A high-speed, full-cast, contemporary dance section gave us a reminder of the vast physical power and grace of genus Homo, technique and execution superb and supreme. Meta-theatrically, it also defied all who might think this was NOT a dance show at its core.

 

Beach metaphors abound in modern literature and music, most of them proclaiming life on the beach to be a baseline of existence. Anthropocene’s beach is one of mockery of society’s bathos. The dancers wore stringy beachwear micro-bits over their skintights. They fussily positioned their beach towels in an imaginary correct social order. Talk ran to lotions, cremes, and SPF. Nothing could be shallower, the scene’s sardonic tone fairly screaming through the comedy: “What are we doing here while the earth dies?”

 

 

The end sections are blended so that they read like one long sequence that brings everything together. Choreography, costumes and narrative focus on a hospital room and one patient, played by Alexa Capareda. Clearly the hospital staff, portrayed goofily, can do nothing for her, and she complains in the lyrical dialog of playwright Alexandra Bassiakou Shaw. A cartage driver saunters in with a large, wheeled table. The driver, Kelsey Oliver, wears the rain-proof attire of a fish market worker or longshoreman. Oliver plays the slouchy character to a T, lighting a long cigarette (should have been a one-inch cigar stub) and abrasively demanding to make the pickup; he’s got other assignments to fulfill. His name is just the Ferryman. Slowly I realized his given name is Charon. The reference to Greek myth confined to the level of allusion shows us Shaw’s literary restraint and exquisiteness.

 

So often it is slow, slow, so very slow. Jennifer Hart respects that. The patient gives a slow, balletic dance around the space, wistful and resigned, and eventually crawls onto a low wheeled cart, where she sits, the Ferryman standing impassively above her. The cart and riders make a slow transit of the stage, coming to rest and disembarking at a wooden platform set center in the house, or audience. The Ferryman and the patient thus share the audience’s view upstage to a blue color field. The image is interrupted by the silhouetted shapes of the cast entering in floorwork, as they began the performance, only now rising and falling in shapes evocative of aquatic and other life. The profound work of movement takes its allotted time, and the lights fade down on us all.

 

Anthropocene

Produced by Performa/Dance

Austin Ventures Studio

Downtown Austin

August 15 and 16, 2025

 

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Anthropocene
by Performa/Dance
Performa/Dance