Playing With Fire Walls: The Laptops Take Center Stage

Dance Review | John Jesurun
The New York Times
By CLAUDIA LA ROCCO
Published: February 6, 2009

At first glance, it might puzzle people to see that Dance Theater Workshop is presenting a work by John Jesurun, the highly regarded experimental playwright and director. What’s he got to do with dance?

In the strictest, traditional sense, perhaps not much. But the lines are increasingly blurring in the contemporary performance world, and the workshop’s artistic director, Carla Peterson, has been outspoken in her desire for cross-pollination. She should be applauded for bringing Mr. Jesurun’s “Firefall” to her stage on Wednesday night.

That there is, sadly, less to applaud in the production itself doesn’t change the importance of the exchange: commissioning new work is a risky business, and it wouldn’t be half so much fun without the constant threat of failure.

And the hourlong “Firefall” certainly has its moments of strange poetry. Seven people sit around three white conference tables, intently engaged with their laptops.

The images they see, along with sometimes altered video of their own faces, appear behind them on a large screen, which dominates the stage. (The video design is by Mr. Jesurun and Ray Roy, one of the performers.) The title conjures thoughts of fire walls, but also freefall.

A photograph of Zimbabwe’s strongman, President Robert Mugabe; YouTube videos of lion attacks and Jimi Hendrix; articles about President Obama; a snippet of Ronald Reagan’s inaugural address: these and other images, many instantly recognizable, are in constant flux, often looping back in what seems like a cryptic message about the world, and ourselves.

They are in conversation with one another, and if only we could break the code, all would be clear. Wouldn’t it?

The performers are in conversation, too, fighting among themselves and with this meta-Web site that they are supposed to be devising. Biblical and mythological references fly in this somewhat sinister creation tale, along with absurd insults and enigmatic directives.

Chris Wendelken, seated in the middle, wears dark red lipstick, applied Joker-style (and we briefly see on the screen an image of Heath Ledger as that villain), and seems to have an added, if tenuous, layer of authority.

But there need to be many more such layers, much more ambiguity and nuance in both the lines and their delivery. (These are young actors, perhaps a bit too young.)

There doesn’t seem to be nearly enough at stake here, in this airless little room at the center of the world. Instead of peering in, you want out, in search of more compelling mysteries.

“Firefall” ends on Saturday at Dance Theater Workshop, 219 West 19th Street, Chelsea; (212) 924-0077, dancetheaterworkshop.org.