Ethereal cello and piano music permeated the misty room as guests entered the East Side Performing Arts theatre Friday night. They quietly found their seats around a white stage. Red and orange spotlights directed their attention to the center, where a man, nearly naked, lay curled, as a narrator’s voice permeated.
“He could feel it – the power just beneath his skin, vast and restless, pressing against the edges of everything he had been taught to contain.”
Slowly, dancer Ty Lyons Graynor began to crawl across the stage as others, dressed in muted beige, covered him with red and maroon silk, forming an X over his body that extended the length of the stage. Slowly, he rose, emerging from the fabric, fighting against the restrictions of the cloaks as they weighed him down. Pushing against the life that suffocated him, he created his own: one built not on light, but on darkness.
“A dark seed, long gathering, has found its form. A new will, dense and burning, forged into being. All that restless wanting distilled into a single body, a single name. The General is born.”
“The Dark Birth” was the first act of Red Nightfall Dance Theatre’s six-part production Unbecoming: A Story Told in Form & Fashion, which ran last weekend. The show combined interpretive dance, design, live music, fashion, and spoken word to tell company founder/artistic director Dorothy O’Shea Overbey’s story of light, change, and loss. Unbecoming was the third production of her CRONE series, a fantasy mythology she’s been developing for over a decade and premiered last year. This chapter told the backstory of the series’ central characters.
The hourlong program highlighted five archetypal figures’ quest for power and meaning through interpretive dance and music, thoughtfully represented by transformative costumes by Robby Durand of EmmaSis Designs.
Model Aurora Banks began the show’s second act, “The Prodigy,” by strutting across the stage, confident and proud, in a maroon dress and hat and gold makeup that glittered in the spotlight that followed her. She represented the “one who burned brighter than the rest,” whose “power was immense – instinctive, unruly, radiant,” but misunderstood and limited, O’Shea Overbey said over the speaker.
Compositions by Sofia Gonzales, performed live by cellist SoJo Gonzales and pianist Finn Dickens, shifted to prerecorded upbeat flute and drumbeats as dancer Megan Davidson replaced Banks as the character, joining others in synchronized movements over an ocean-blue projection. The other dancers supported her as she moved until the General, dressed in all black, entered the stage, chasing and grasping at her as she pulled away, cello intensifying. The dance’s mix of fluidity and aggression demonstrated the duality of the Prodigy’s desire for understanding and power and her resistance to it. Ultimately, Davidson gave in, embracing the figure as her movements turned rigid. Model Georgia Garner entered with a black and red gown and veil mimicking a halo stained with blood, appearing to suffocate her, representing the first archetypal transformation:
“They mistook being used for being valued. They mistook obedience for trust. The ones who had loved them … could only watch as the brightest among them became a weapon.”
Act three introduced model Neha Mambapoor as the Zealot. In a light blue silk dress with a brown rope collar around her neck, she danced freely around the stage, contrasting Kanami Nakabayashi’s harsh moves next. As she moved, a web projection from Scott Gregory emerged beneath her feet, appearing to entangle her as she weaved between other dancers. She struggled before collapsing on the floor and covering her ears. Lights faded from blue to red as the General entered the room once again, pushing the others away as they tried to free her.
“Now, they move as they are told to move. They repeat what they are given to repeat,” a mere puppet of the person she once was, O’Shea Overbey said. Music faded until all that was left was her feet hitting the floor, a rhythmic symbol of frustration, anger, and helplessness as she fell into the General’s trap – this time made physical thanks to Jonathan Oliver Foster’s red mesh design.
Model Laney Phillips entered as the show’s final archetype of the one that clings to another for certainty – the Follower – in flowing navy. Alongside dancer Rachel Culver, the artists absorbed into the General, their own identities “no longer required.” The Prodigy and the Zealot returned, their once tan outfits now black to match the General’s, to pull Culver away from her protectors. Classical piano, cello staccato, and melodic saxophone boomed from the speakers. Could the darkness really get them all?
Final model Juniper Darrow entered for “Interstice,” strutting across the stage in a gold flowing dress, dark pointed nails, and a papier-mâché headpiece covering her face. She looked like fire itself, blowing through the dancers as they ebbed and flowed around her to Alexa Capareda’s choreography.
Ultimately, the darkness won out as the music stopped suddenly, then returned all at once with a moving orchestral crescendo. Dancers left the stage and all the models returned, allowing viewers to see both sides of their transformed outfits back-to-back as they partook in a classic runway walk around the perimeter of the stage.
If this production embodied tension, the ending exuded peace. If the acts were loud, the closing was soft. While the show was about the lure of belonging, the conclusion portrayed the power of acceptance as the Mother, played by Cellise Brown, walked to center stage. Dressed in all white with a towering antler headpiece and flowing train carried by dancers (who had transformed, once again), this time replacing their black cloaks with pure white. Brown stood tall with the others, welcoming them home without anger or resentment for leaving, but with understanding, supporting them as they resisted the dark General’s attempts to pull them down again, unmoved, until he disappeared. In this act, Unbecoming reminded us that even in loss, there is hope. Even in letting go, there is love. Even in darkness, there is light.
One couldn’t help but be moved at the symbolism of the show’s ending. Even as the archetypes fell prey to their quest for power and the General’s promise of guidance, their return to the Mother demonstrated that light can always return, even after the darkest lessons. The individual acts, sometimes elusive in their interpretive style, could be about any struggle, leaving the canvas open for the audience to interpret the meaning as they wish and, in doing so, making the moral applicable to everyone. While each viewer likely walked away from Unbecoming with their own emotions and lessons, the show was ultimately about a time-old tale. Darkness may enter your life and you may lose yourself in it. It may whisk you away with false promises and blind you to who you really are. Each of the show’s archetypes are attracted to the darkness for different reasons, but their transgressions don’t make them evil. They make them vulnerable, and open to learning and growing as they return to the light stronger than when they left.
“What has fallen away is not the end of the story, because this is what the darkness does not understand,” O’Shea Overbey read in the final act. “Every fracture is an opening. Every wound is a place where new roots take hold,” and what grows next is “something that knows the dark because it has walked through it, and chosen to bloom.”