Rochester Fringe Festival: Get a Foot in the Door: the Dance of Late Capitalism

Colleen Culley’s multi-media presentation was arguably the ‘fringiest’ of the Fringe Festival performances I attended.  Not only is Colleen not well known (unlike, say Garth Fagan Dance, or Dave Barry, who, when he took the stage, admitted he’d never been to or performed at a Fringe Festival, and didn’t understand how he qualified!), but the show took place in the Bernunzio Uptown Music store, not a traditional venue for a performance.  She explained the genesis of the project – her master’s thesis – and introduced the six performers, including her husband (none was a trained dancer, which was partly the point – to show how movement is related to our everyday working world).  While they read various passages and moved on the “stage,” clips from Colleen’s video of “Foot In…” ran on a screen behind them.

The live movements complemented, rather than duplicated the film, and at times the performers simply watched the screen, encouraging the audience to focus on the film, rather than themselves. For those who hadn't seen the video before, Colleen carefully balanced the live versus filmed action, so that one didn’t compete with the other.  Not all of the performance involved movement; one particular segment involved the performers sitting on the stage and writing words or phrases on large pieces of paper.  Curiously, while many of the men’s messages were boastful, the lone woman’s were mostly self-effacing. 

It was exciting to see Jeff Spevak (arts reviewer for the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle) in the audience, and even more exciting to see that Colleen’s performance made his column!  The show definitely challenged the audience to think, rather than sit passively and be entertained (as one would at, say, a performance of The Nutcracker).   I’m guessing that some in the audience left the performance thinking: ‘Huh?’ But the next time they, or the rest of the audience, sit in front of a computer, or drive a car, or become aware of whatever repetitive motions they perform in the course of the day, they just might think: ‘Aha!!!’