Hiroki Ichinose, Cori Kresge, Silas Riener and Rashaun Mitchell in "Performance" (Photo courtesy of REDCAT)

“Some fine day I’ll have to pay …you can’t sacrifice everything in life to curiosity,” ponders Dennis Orphen, a disillusioned writer in the opening of Dawn Powell’s 1936 novel "Turn, Magic Wheel."

Orphen’s contemplation is a musing that many artistic types often face—how to sustain one’s creative curiosity and passion, as a hobby or a profession, while also keeping day-to-day realities in check—groceries, bills, rent. As children, we might have no trouble imagining ourselves as astronauts or ballerinas while playing on a playground. But growing up, we might become more reticent to share our dreams—like Orphen more aware that our curious childhood aspirations may never come to pass, or if they do, come at a painful price. 

For choreographer and former Merce Cunningham dancer Rashaun Mitchell and his collaborators, singer-song writer Stephin Merritt, (frontman for The Magnetic Fields), and set designer-visual artist Ali Naschke-Messing, the realm of fanciful, adolescent imaginings is not a world to be mourned, or sacrificed, but a universe to be nurtured. 

In the program notes for “Performance,” which ran at REDCAT this weekend, Mitchell writes, “My aim is to create a world where the ordinary, the spectacle and the spiritual meet . . . an ambiguous place where the wonder of children exists all the time.” 

Indeed, a playful tone emerges from the beginning of “Performance,” as Mitchell cartwheels onto the stage, like an overgrown kid, readying himself for a day at the park. Not long thereafter, Mitchell put a silver salad bowl on his head, donning it as if it were a Daft Punk-inspired astronaut helmet. And with this, we are almost ready for liftoff. 

Stephin Merritt strums his ukulele and sings in "Performance" (Photo courtesy of REDCAT)

Mitchell’s small ensemble of dancers—Merce Cunningham alums Silas Riener, Cori Kresge, and newcomer Hiroki Ichinose—gradually collected on stage. Enacting duties typically performed by stagehands, they mark, or “spike,” the floor with duck tape and tug on strings of fishing line, securing a mobile of gold-leaf flakes to the theater’s rafters. 

While this pedestrian preparation of the stage lingers longer than preferred, it succeeds in preparing the room for the child’s play to come. Following the set’s assemblage, Reiner and Ichinose roughhouse jovially, using their svelte, athletic bodies to lift and swing each other around in circles. 

Later, Riener, exercising his renowned technical and physical prowess, slithers across the stage, almost as if he were mimicking an exotic lizard-snake—his legs sliding forward on the ground from his thrust out hips, while his elbows support his arched back. In another instance, Kresge yodels like a fish warbling underwater, while also strumming a jellyfish tangle of Messing’s luminescent ribbons, which hang languidly from hanging pipes high above.  Merritt’s acoustic ukulele ballads, which he sings both onstage and off throughout the evening, create a delightful layer of whimsy, as his absurdist lyrics about “Two Mermaids from Barcelona” and figures “dancing” in his head, emanate from his signature base voice.  

Even so, this is an austere playground for the curious imagination to roam.  Aside from Messing’s whimsically stunning gold leaf mobile and jellyfish tangle, the stage is decidedly bare and Merritt’s vocals are neither amplified by microphone, nor engineered by sound design. Unlike “Performance’s” premiere at the Institute for Contemporary Art (ICA), which provided views of Boston Harbor as a backdrop, REDCAT’s venue is a somber box, coated in black paint from floor to ceiling. 

Ali Naschke-Messing's set design sparkles in "Performance" (Photo Courtesy of REDCAT)

This staging, (the only one performed outside of Boston), intensifies the negative spaces between Mitchell’s movements, Merritt’s music and Messing’s set design, calling attention to the darkness and emptiness of the space, and thereby posing a haunting question—what happens after the passionate curiosity of childhood evaporates and disappears?

“Performance” resists giving away any definitive answers in this particular setting. But in the work’s final moments, as the lights dim and the dancers recede into the black background behind Messing’s gold-leaf installation, there are a few glimmering hints. These flakes of gold catch the light, (designed beautifully by Davison Scandrett), one last time, shimmering like a constellation before the break of dawn, but also pulsing like a faded, yet not forgotten memory—reminding us that curiosity is not a sacrifice, but an ongoing pursuit of that first sparkling sign to reach for the stars. 

Rashaun Mitchell, Stephin Merritt and Ali Naschke-Messing's "Performance" ran at REDCAT on 631 West 2nd St. in Downtown Los Angeles from December 4th to December 7th. For information about future shows at REDCAT visit www.redcat.org  

Contact Contributor Christina Campodonico here.

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