Review: Water by Vortex Repertory Theatre
by David Glen Robinson
I bought my ticket and sat in the outside coffee bar, The Butterfly Bar, at the Vortex before seating was called. Late summer concerns seemed to run forcefully to West Nile virus in Texas, as every mode of mosquito repulsion was in full application on the deck as the Saturday night crowd assembled.
Inside, these cares buzzed away forever with the first glimpse of the set. Upstage center a waterfall fell like liquid plate glass, perhaps twelve feet high. It sparkled and splashed continuously throughout the show, flowing into a shallow oval pool, which took up the rest of the stage. The dancing took place in this water, of course -- how could we expect anything less? The set credit goes to Ann Marie Gordon, with Kenneth Gall as Water Master. Jason Amato’s lights played off the waterfall, danced in the pool and bubbled through agitated water globes fixed to the ceiling. The variety of his lighting sets through the show seemed without limit and formed a masterfully imaginative set of designs in light.
And imagination is a keyword for the entire show. It began with two figures suspended in nets before the sheet of water and above the pool. They were motionless, restrained figures in containers. The image from anywhere in the theatre was one of fetuses afloat in the oceanic water of the womb. This tableau was set before a sonic background of trance-hypno-type music, and after a few minutes I definitely felt that I was in a trance. The music credit was given to Chad Salvata. Salvata is an almost shamefully under-recognized leader in composing and arranging in Austin theatre. His choices are quite often unusual and unexpected, but they almost always serve the total production. His work in Water was surefooted and flawless.
And so the babies (Andy Agne and Joanna Wright) were born into a world of water. Despite my trance-like state, I admit that I had initial difficulties joining emotionally with the cast on this wild water ride. I was dreamy, they were laughing and splashing. It seemed that the choreography early on was a series of tricks to get the front row wet (I brought a beach towel; it came in handy for me and the lady who sat next to me). Soon, however, I gave in to the sensory overload and the enjoyments offered by the cast in the capable hands of choreographer Tony Bravo. So much of theatrical appreciation is a process of letting go. As Director Bonnie Cullum wrote in her program notes: “The ever-changing ShapeShifter teaches us to flow with creative impulse and to release expectation.” The same goes for the audience.
Most of the audience, like me, seemed to gain that release and reaped the rewards of satisfying choreography and endlessly fantastical imagery. The show took us through many forms of our elemental theme from wombs, streams, rain, dark cavern water, rivers, and, of course, the ocean. Choreographer Bravo is still capable of surprises, as when the cast suddenly formed a single mighty ocean wave, and yet again when Gabriel Maldonado broke out of the wave doing a finger dance of a baby sea turtle. One more twist for a triple, Maldonado’s baby sea turtle suddenly ate Joanna Wright’s tiny fish finger dance. The folks at Vortex do not miss opportunities for humor.
Comes a storm, and it is probably a hurricane. Its goddess, Anderson Dear, steps out from the waterfall, clothed only in storm, and sings operatically of the course of the tempest. Anderson Dear is perhaps the Vortex’s boldest singing and performing talent, and she has provided the absolute peak of many Vortex shows with her powerful, clear tones that have never needed amplification.
The show’s heart ultimately belongs to choreographer Toni Bravo. Her dances go from start to finish, from womb to transformation. Technically, the dances were based in modern technique, and they incorporated pedestrian movement. There was miming of behavior, as in a street scene where people in business clothes, evening gowns and homeless rags were drenched in a downpour. But there was no vocal miming of words, at least none that I noticed. The singing of Dear and her chorus was all vocalization of the music, no lyrics, except possibly a chant early in the show, which may have been in a tribal language. If this sounds familiar, Director Cullum confirms it in her program notes, stating that Bravo and she share a long term admiration for Pina Bausch and her world-spanning oeuvre. The movement approaches in Water indeed have the look of Pina Bausch, but the creative exploration of them is all Toni Bravo’s. Bravo’s choreographed movements in Water explore the fluid mystery and endless forms of that medium like no other design or performance element in the show.
Twenty years ago I watched Toni Bravo emerge dancing from a thousand pounds of corn in a pile on the stage of the old Vortex on Ben White Boulevard. The performance was such a surprise that I wondered how she avoided suffocation before she rose from the grain. That, my friend, was a choreographic challenge. The title of the show was Corn, and Toni Bravo has met all choreographic challenges since then, many of them on international stages, without seeming to strain at all. She is a font of fluid choreography that doesn’t seem to diminish its flow. How appropriate it is that she gives us a rich compendium of choreographic ideas in a show entitled Water.
Review by Claire Christine Spera for the Statesman's Austin360.com Seeing Things blog, September 10
Water
by Bonnie Cullum, Chad Salvata, Toni Bravo
The Vortex
