Two Performance Reviews: "Enough"

"Enough!," A trapeze show at Chase Street Warehouse, Nov. 3-5, 2006.

"Since 1950, we Americans have used up more resources than everyone who ever lived on earth before then."

What does it take to force America to come to terms with its own habits? That is the question asked by Canopy Studio's "Enough!," its program quoted above. Come to think of it, it's not so much that this question is asked directly; it's more imagined.

The real question, as related by Artistic Director and senior dancer Susan Murphy, is "not whether we can afford to fix the problem, but whether we can afford not to."

But as one watched, the imagined question might just have come to mind.

Using trapezes, rope, streams of fabric, and even a box full of four dancers twelve feet off the studio floor, "Enough!" both assaulted and soothed the senses as its performers climbed, twirled, and swung through eleven acts of often exquisite artistic expression.

Murphy introduced the premise after her solo performance "Lost Garden," which evoked a poignant, yet sadly overused feeling of loss as the studio's projector shined an image of an ancient, massive tree being chopped down.

During the performance, Murphy danced across and then laid peacefully upon a large pair of branches hanging from the ceiling in the back of the studio (one wonders how they got the branches).

This is but one example of the many fascinating, dangling props used during the presentation, another of which was a box-frame hung over 12 feet off the studio floor while holding four dancers.

"Packaging," the number that used said device, was by far the most rousing and thought-provoking performance of the evening, and only the fourth at that. As the four ceiling-height performers shifted symmetrically from position to spinning position, one could not help but consider the wonder of the human imagination.

"Enough!" provoked the disturbing, inconvenient sentiment that there's too much population and not enough common sense in regard to the continuation of civilization as we know it. The performance ends up feeling bittersweet, as it has used the beauty and refinement of dance to illustrate a forthcoming doom of life as we have known it.

Unfortunately, it concluded on an unrealistically idealistic note, with all of the dancers (representing the human race) embracing each other after spending an hour convincing the audience that mankind is probably too foolish to change its ways before it's too late. Again, bittersweet.

If only that single word, the title of the show, yelled during the height of the final ensemble number "War," was really enough.

-Reviewed by: Miles Moffit

I took my program as I walked into Canopy’s Chase Street Warehouse studio on the evening of the second night of their newest production, "Enough!," removed my shoes as instructed so as not to scuff up the delicate bamboo surface of the floor-level stage that I was about to sit directly in front of, sat, opened the program, and commenced to wishing I hadn’t. I never even would’ve imagined it possible, but it appeared that I was about to bear witness to the truly audacious: a group of several human beings attempting to tackle the dimensions and ramifications of a complex socio-political issue via flying trapeze.

After this realization, it was immediately difficult to suppress an assumption that this was going to be at best a little pretentious and heavy-handed; at worst, outright suck to the point of comedy. I’d seen several Canopy productions before, and I have to tell you that trapeze is not known for being a particularly political medium. For example, a previous show tackled the general theme of “weather” compellingly and with panache. "Enough!’ s" ambition was considerably loftier: to explore the ecological damage that humans have caused, the physical and emotional consequences, and what might be done about it. On the flying trapeze. I can’t stress that enough. I did my best to suppress skepticism at the ability of people to express ideas about our greatest environmental and cultural strife by hanging upside-down from swings and politely folded my hands in my lap as the lights went down.

Unfortunately for "Enough!," things got off to a rocky start early on as the lights were cued twice before the performers and stagehands were ready for them, exhibiting an amateurism that is atypical of Canopy performances. The subtle hastiness of this small blunder betrayed a roughness that permeated the majority of the show’s 11 performances.

The eight performers in the first piece, for example, were never really able to synchronize their moves, though sometimes they got close enough that it was clear they were aiming to. "Enough!’s" artistic director and Canopy impresario Susan Murphy employed Joanna Haigood, a special choreographer from San Francisco, for the second piece. The result consisted of Murphy slowly climbing around on some actual tree branches that hung by ropes from the ceiling as video footage of forests played on a large screen behind her. Conceptually it was interesting, but visually it was just plain boring. Haigood is not credited in the notes of any of the other pieces. This means that she came to Athens from San Francisco just to help a woman figure out how to walk slowly (and without the actual appearance of choreography) on a tree branch, and it pains me to say that that is a little embarrassing.

Most of the other pieces were crushed similarly under the overambitiousness of the theme. Many of the performances had only a superficial adherence to the theme, such as the duo piece of Lauren Puls and Annette Byrd in which the two rode bicycles onto the stage, got off them, and spent the next five minutes performing individual trapeze moves while a giant video of people riding bicycles played in the background. In fact, the video overpowered the scene visually to the extent that I sometimes forgot there were people on the stage performing, and after enough repetitions of the 20-second clip over the course of several minutes it got more than a little old.

Of course, there were some triumphs. Melissa Roberts, Nicole Mermans, Lindy Pals and Megan Cattau all shined in their group performance contained entirely within the metal outline of a large cube suspended high above the floor. This piece appeared to have no adherence to the theme whatsoever, and was all the better for it. Chris Knightes and Cattau were magnificent in their duo piece performed on a ladder hanging from the ceiling. The crowd went wild for their perfect grace, and they too were unencumbered by the theme.

Most triumphant of all was Lisa Yaconelli’s modern dance performance, which contained no trapeze element whatsoever but the most well-executed adherence to the theme by far. Yaconelli danced around a clothes rack that had a large “Sale” sign in front of it, stopping occasionally to add clothes. All the clothes were the same—dull gray t-shirts—and yet as she added more, her accumulation of them became more frenzied and needy. Eventually she added two large coats and a hat to her attire and became so burdened with material excesses that she could no longer dance. It was a plain, strong message delivered with elegance.

Canopy Studio would do well to apply Yaconelli’s lesson to future theme shows. There is nothing wrong with being ambitious, and the tendency to want to use one’s talents to promote ideas that one feels passionate about is completely understandable. However, ultimately "Enough!" proved it pretentious to suppose that a trapeze performance is going to be an effective communicator of very complex socio-political concepts. With this show, Canopy Studio became so burdened by the weight of an ostentatious ambition that it, too, forgot how to dance.

-Reviewed by: Jace Bartet