Like a performer who writhes and then turns and then somersaults and then leaps, the nature of dance, and what dance can be, is ever evolving, and growing more beautiful, and getting deeply weird, and whimsical, and memorable.
Which any art form should, should its participants wish for it to remain relevant and urgent and real. Look to the Think Tank Gallery and "Queen George," a site-specific dance performance that is 100% not about audience members lined up in rows of chairs all looking in the same direction but rather multiple happenings in multiple rooms, rooms that may only hold a single audience member at a time.
Oh, and custom-made furnishings. The avant garde, envelope-testing, boundary-ditching, surprise-surprise dancers of "Queen George" won't simply be moving about in empty space; there shall be couches and chairs and such in the scene, furnishings that are very much at the center of the contemporary action.
The word "playground" has been used to describe the furniture-filled environment, so let that tiptoe across your craw for a bit. And if your craw has any more room after that for tantalizing ideas, the dancers here are described as "visual art."
And those dancers? They're from the Ate9 Dance Company. The designer is Amir Raveh and abstract expressionist artist Avi Roth is imbuing the space with mysterious energy.
Best of all, this avant-garde-y, craw-challenging, whimsy-summoning spectacle can be enjoyed in the middle of the week, when many of us need our minds and hearts to be goosed in a surprising, craw-testing way. The dates? Wednesday, Jan. 21 through Saturday, Jan. 25 (in case you like your craw-goosing to extend into the weekend).
The Think Tank Gallery is downtown and tickets are twenty dollars. How dancers interact with the furniture, and how you think about furniture from here on out, may not have a price tag, though. Nor do mind-expanding fancies and thoughts.
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Those are yours to keep when the night is done -- no leaving those at the gallery door.
