(The Kennedy Center)
Can art help us process the rash of police shootings that plague our society? Emmy winner Debbie Allen finds an unexpected way to address this crisis: dance.
After successful runs in Los Angeles and Brisbane, Allen’s mixed media musical FREEZE FRAME…Stop The Madness lands at the Kennedy Center this weekend. Originally produced in 2013, the show stitches together a series of interconnected vignettes in Los Angeles surrounding a police shooting of an unarmed black youth.
“The beauty of the show is that the subject matter is still relevant,” said Vivian Nixon, who stars as Eartha Davis, a young dance student whose mother battles drug addiction.
FREEZE FRAME is something of a family affair—Nixon is Allen’s daughter. Her father Norman is one of the show’s producers, and her younger brother, composer Thump, provides original music. It’s a fluid, changing production, most notably in the show closing coda that displays the names of black men and women gunned down by cops, from Mike Brown to Tamir Rice and Sandra Bland.
“These are real life vignettes, based around people that we know, so as their stories evolve, there’s an addition here or there. Debbie is always updating the script, always adding new names to the scroll. It’s always being updated because this is something that is real and happening every day.”
The weight of current events is palpable throughout the show, which mixes song, dance and monologues with complimentary video work. It can be sensory overload, but the juxtapositions between the live performance and the filmed visuals are fascinating.
“Because I’m on stage the whole time, I don’t get to see the other media,” Nixon said. “I was working on my scene and I turned around and saw the screen for the first time, and it was eye opening what I was interacting with.”
FREEZE FRAME is an eclectic display. Allen’s choreography makes for a rousing spectacle, but the lively music tells the emotional story more powerfully than the dramatic narrative. There’s a sprawling cast of individuals, each affected by the current social climate in a different way, but the general tenor of their scenes is shackled to an after-school special cuteness that’s hard to parse.
(The Kennedy Center)Which isn’t to say that the performances don’t measure up to the sounds. Each of the spoken word interludes, in which characters speaking directly to the audience about their predicaments, are affecting. But as the show progresses, there are simply too many for them to establish a collective gravitas.
The monologues that work best avoid the preachy tone of the larger arc, like the thrilling tale of Slick (Dion Watson), a wisecracking high school basketball player. Watson has so much charisma that his asides bring the audience deeper into his own personal world. Unfortunately, other stories feel like barely fleshed-out sketches.
Nixon herself delivers a touching portrait of youthful potential held back by family tragedy. But it’s the musical numbers that showcase the most brio. “Dancin’ Snack” is a brilliant, crowd pleasing set piece based on Eartha’s nickname (a nickname Debbie Allen had in college). Between the thumping beat and the colorful light direction, it feels like Baz Luhrmann directing a video for Lisa Lisa & Cult Jam.
The show’s greatest strength is its ability to use music as a prism through which a pain that can be difficult to express turns into catharsis.
In “The One”, the entire history of popular black music is condensed in a brisk, inspirational medley anchored by a show-stopping dance routine by tap-dancing goddess Cathie Nicholas. It’s a microcosm for the rest of the production, a showcase for the complexity of the black influence on popular culture. Original music from Stevie Wonder and James Ingram shares a space with the sunny, Neptunes-esque dance pop compositions provided by Thump, who also mixes in skittering, hard-edged trap drums for the more tumultuous scenes.
This kaleidoscopic musical framing fails in two glaring instances. First, the questionable “What Am I Supposed To Do?” features white police officers krumping over a crunk-influenced banger, expressing the difficulty of life as an inner city cop. In another scene, a town hall discussion on gun control devolves into a senator miming Beyonce’s hand motions from the “Put A Ring On It” video while bragging about a Supreme Court ruling. Both moments create a troubling dissonance wholly at odds with the otherwise rapturous production.
At its best, FREEZE FRAME is a rumination on an evolving moment in our nation’s history, ebbing and flowing as the collective black voice vents its frustrations. It remains a work in progress, but that imperfection is part of its charm.
FREEZE FRAME…Stop The Madness runs Friday through Sunday at The Kennedy Center. Shows are sold out.
