Like Tiny Birds
Mad Shak’s most recent, evening-length work, Like Tiny Birds, shows ample signs of this philosophy. The piece seems based on an actual dream that’s revealed to us in two halves, each time in a text that’s both displayed on an easel and read to us by a performer. Ironically this method makes the story as clear as possible yet emphasizes the distance between an elusive dream and the dry, logical, everyday words needed to describe it. In the first half the dreamer is directed to save the earth with her band of superheroes by diving “down and in” and turning a lever, but when she does so she somehow loses touch with the threat of destruction. In the second half it’s a year later and the team of superheroes have turned into deer, living in an odd peace until a conflict arises: the dreamer’s partner wants to follow through on their death pact, and the dreamer wishes to live.
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Perhaps because Mad Shak avoids “editing and judgement,” this is not a well-made dance. Many sections are obscure and therefore tedious (the sweaty conditions at Link’s Hall didn’t help); I found little of the mysterious meaning that sometimes arises from a dance carefully structured to make the most of obscure images. The choreography isn’t surprising or much fun, and with a few exceptions the dancing isn’t technically challenging or accomplished. And the dream at the center remained for me an irritating puzzle: my own dreams or those of people I love might resonate for me–but the dream of a stranger?
