BUGLISI DANCE Theatre

In the introductory speech for Buglisi Dance Theater’s show “Leaping In… 30th Anniversary”,
Jacqulyn Buglisi explained her creations and collaborations with her dancers invites a “feeling of
humanity”.

The experiential totality began with 1998 piece Frida, where three generations of dancers took
the stage, as three versions of multifaceted heroine Frida Kahlo in varying stages of her life.
Each artists’ impetus for movement came from the soul of the Frida in which she was
representing.

To think of the identities of an individual, moving together through the representation of their
own life, is overwhelming. The youngest unknowing of the horrors the middle faces, and the
eldest representing a ferocious guardian of understanding. Oh to dance with the versions of
yourself contained within you- it is beautiful. After a piece full of almost-s and echoes of one
another, Frida culminates with the dancers together in a transcendental moment, where
politics of the body and time defy expectation. As Frida’s words resonate, “I grew old in a few
instances.”

In the debut of the company’s new work, A Walk Through Fire, the dancers carried and moved
through the piece with the same weight on their shoulders that our earthly community is facing
today. Buglisi dedicated the performance of the 2007 work to the “innocent children of the
world suffering the ravages of war and hunger”, which is no light decision. A body that moves, is a body
deserving of justice, and in the same light, using the body through dance activism has the
capability to show up for the bodies unable to express so freely.

The dancers cycle through pressure-filled athletic sequences of differing arrangements. They take up and consume the
space, just as the soundscore overwhelms it. Inspired by Dead Can Dance’s album The Serpents
Egg, the movement writhes in a serpentine manner, in and out of the floor, the dancers in and
out of one another.

Following intermission, the audience is taken to an entirely separate realm in Caravaggio Meets Hopper. The world is forfeited for a jazzy, comedic take on the human experience. Chairography, theatrics, suits and bowler hats are the means of societal mirroring in the summation of the trifecta show. With wooden sunglasses-like accessories covering their faces like cages, the dancers enter in a dramatic chair-drag businessman sequence, newspapers
and all, and take us on an exploration of relationship dynamics through hyper-theatricality.

To find a place where so many dimensions and textures of dance can live, is no easy feat,
however, it is important for keeping the art form alive that these spaces exist.

EYE ON THE ARTS, NY — Emma Edy Morris