Crowd

BAM in association with FIAF’s Crossing The Line Festival Presents CROWD Conception, choreography and scenography by Gise`le Vienne Lights… dim… dirt… covered… floor… slo…-…mo… walk… from… the… corner… in… a… hoodie… and… glitter… sneakers…

Did you ever go to a parking lot as a teenager, drink, smoke, smooch, bare your midriff, and generally interact in close bodily contact with other teens? Either way, watching a performance of those rituals for ninety, uninterrupted minutes, by non-teens, to an electronic sound scape, is a special challenge.

One may never tire of watching the sheer virtuosity of highly trained bodies re-enacting pedestrian movements executed in extreme slow motion, but soon the mind wanders… the voyeurism of watching sexualized, irreverent, hedonistic, sometimes violent, mostly crass imagery morph from one calculated moment to the next has its own appeal, but eventually one wants more.

Choreographed and designed by Gisele Vienne and presented by FIAF’s Crossing the Line Festival, at CROWD’s forty five-minute mark a group downed a couple of beers at a snail’s pace, then everyone froze and looked up, overcome by angst, like a vision of a Renaissance Pieta, or a Descent from the Cross, where every character’s horror is frozen in time

But like every other moment, it melted away, replaced by aggression, flying dirt, two girls kissing, and someone screaming. Without some cohesion, we are left to wonder what is left… Eventually, everyone collapsed… the dirt floor littered with inert bodies… an image of the aftermath of mass shootings, or a battlefield full of corpses and the wounded, or the Walking Dead… one girl crawled to the other dead bodies. There’s plenty of time to think, of course– which is not a bad thing… if… you… have… the… time…
EYE ON THE ARTS, NY — Nicole Duffy