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Anthony Brown
What I remember most is the booming, humming, screeching cacophony of sound. That is what enfolded every other element in last Thursday’s performance at Asbury Hall.
The balcony seats afforded—in my view—the best vantage point for experiencing Nimbus Dance/Reactionary Ensemble’s Surrounded, a multimedia spectacle involving instrumental music, vocals, dance, digitally-manipulated video, and architecture.
Photo by Jaime Ellis
It was the architecture and the sound that were most compelling about this performance, otherwise not dissimilar to previous productions from these regular collaborators. Architect Brad Wales created a large circular wall/scrim which served the dual purpose of displaying projected video—against which dancers performed—and enclosing a portion of the audience, who received an intimate view of the video and dance, but very little else. From the balcony I could see this scrim, the people sitting within it, and the stage—which was covered with artists and musicians busy at their laptops and instruments. I could also absorb all this visual information within the larger context of the church’s architecture. As the dancers darted forth to perform in front of the video, musicians occasionally marched among the balcony audience, adding individual squawks and screeching to the overall din.
Photo by Jaime Ellis
The intimacy of Allen Street’s Gallery 164, where this group usually performs, allows a greater focus on the content of the video and the thematic intent of the production. That was not evident here, and I believe intentionally so. The production was successful because of what it did, not what it said. It filled the large space with sound and activity, stunned us into undivided attention, and at times even created the illusion that we as audience were indistinguishable elements of the spectacle at hand.
While at Gallery 164, the musicians and those managing the control panels are generally tucked away into the storefront; here they were front and center, with at least 30 artists onstage focusing intently on the work at hand. For some odd reason, this was one of the most enthralling and enjoyable elements of the performance.
Brad Wales, Beth Elkins/Nimbus, Reactionary Ensemble, Brian Milbrand, and all the other artists who make these moving parts into an enthralling whole have taken a big step here. Though they will surely continue in their storefront venue, it will be interesting to see them produce at this scale again
This review is based on the first 50-minute act of Surrounded.
