New Now Wow!

This last week has been a little rough, but on Saturday I got to usher for the final night of Northwest Dance Project's New Now Wow!. I enjoyed all three pieces, but Malign Star (the last of the program) was my favorite; maybe because it had the most narrative, which appeals to me as a writer. It was like Lord of the Flies meets Romeo and Juliet cast with athletic Catholic school runaways and set in a bleak dystopian future. The piece also made excellent use of light and sound design, the last image of the show (a group of dancers backlit and advancing on a lone figure) was amazing.

Malign Star - picture from Northwest Dance Project's Facebook

When the show was over I just wanted to watch it again. The movement of bodies is not something as easy for me to remember as an interesting turn of phrase or a still image. Dance is fleeting, there's so much to take in: Sound, color, light, costumes, they way a dancer jumps, the way their muscles hardly shake as they lift one of their legs over their head, the tiny gestures of their hands, how still they can be. There is a unique pleasure in watching a body which has trained itself to preform movements you are not capable of move through space with intention, movement is an art most of us do not practice. There is also a unique sadness in realizing you are 31 and you'll never be able to move like that, you can't even touch your toes, you should have started training years ago.

This is all just to say, that the show was one of the best nights of dance I'd seen in a long time and if you have the opportunity to see a Northwest Dance Project performance you should.