Dance and narration combine to examine the grief of a relationship cut short in The Kind of Thing That Would Happen. (Photo courtesy of Capital Fringe)
By DCist contributor Allie Goldstein
Reminds us of: That rose-colored sheath you hang over your love stories; a diary danced out loud.
Flop, Fine or Fringe-tastic?: Fringe-tastic.
The Kind of Thing That Would Happen explores the grief of a cut-short relationship through a creative combination of dance and monologue. Much of the choreography by Olivia Sabee takes place in domestic scenes: The couple eats dinner on the kitchen floor (where it’s cooler in the summer), washes dishes at the sink, and goes to bed. Meanwhile, two other dancers provide commentary. One of them is the older version of the love-struck protagonist; she narrates scenes through journal entries, casting them in the half-truths of human memory. “It’s difficult to separate what happened from what seemed to happen,” she says. The other, dressed in all black, poses philosophical questions about art itself: Is dance as “kinetic design” enough, or should it tell a story? And what’s the difference between a historian and a poet, anyway? It’s meta, yes, but the questions are thought-provoking enough that you probably won’t mind.
The dancers bring genuine emotion to their performances, from a heart-stopping when-we-first-met scene to a let-loose French rock ‘n’ roll romp to a cabinet-slamming search for meaning in the kitchen. Like memory, the narrative is not linear, and refrains of movement and monologue recur throughout. What is real? Though the show’s premise might lend itself to contrasting each party’s perspectives à la Showtime’s The Affair, Sabee never goes there, and we’re left to see the man only through the woman’s perspective. Though much is left up for interpretation, Kind of Thing does answer one of its own questions about whether dance should make the audience marvel at the movement or really feel something. In this case, it’s both.
Where to See It: Gallaudet University’s Elstad Auditorium, July 9 at 3:45 p.m., July 13 at 7:30 p.m., July 15 at noon, and July 21 at 5:45 p.m. Buy tickets here.
See here for all of DCist’s 2017 Capital Fringe coverage. All shows are $17, with a button ($7) required for entry.
