Then She fell—an immersive dance theatre experience.
For my birthday, a couple friends and I went to an interactive performance at Greenpoint Hospital in Brooklyn. The Hospital had been turned into a performance space by Third Rail Projects at the beginning of the summer, and will continue to use the space for the remainder of the year. The experience attempted to bring a new breath to dance theatre for attendees. It successfully did. Only fifteen people are admitted per show, and the production was inspired by Lewis Carroll’s, Through the looking Glass and Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland. It bridged two ingenious works by Carroll that displayed his mastery on the fears and confusion of adults, and the limitless imaginations of children.
When we first entered, a “nurse” admitted you in like a patient being admitted into an asylum. You might as well play along was the look she gave us. We were ushered into a waiting room with the other “patients” who curiously looked and walked around the dimly lit room. We were immediately given some sort of elixir that contained alcohol. (You have to be over twenty-one to attend this show) Was this to suppress our excitement? Or ease us into an unknown realm? Regardless, it felt mystical, dark and dramatic.
A woman entered the room and silence followed. She build the suspense by looking intently into all our eyes before uttering a single word. The performance had begun and our sanity determined for us by a set of rules to follow.
A few actors came in and my friends and I were separated and taken into opposite ended rooms. As I hazily got directed into one room to another with other strangers, I noticed the expertly adorned mix of moorish fabrics and old Victorianesque furniture. It suggested a transcendence of time between the past and the present. It was beginning to become an intoxicating adventure as the actors threw themselves into walls and talked to their reflections in mirrors about their deepest fears. The entire scene was voyeuristic as we were kept at a certain distance that allowed us to be close, but not too close.
After undergoing a wild scene where we were encouraged to defy table etiquette, lead of course by the Mad Hatter—who was played by a woman; I had been taken into a room with one of the Alices (There are two Alice’s played by two different women in the performance) and there I engaged in a reflective conversation about heartbreak, while I brushed her hair. The actors are mostly reciting the prose and poetry of Lewis Carroll and theatre-goers are encouraged to rummage through the drawers and cabinets and unlock what we can with the set of keys that we were given before we went down the rabbit hole. At times the mood slowed down, and either you alone or along with someone else, were left to soak in the tension left in the room by one of the performers. Then out of nowhere either the Red Queen or the bossy Alice would go into a performative frenzy. Finally, the actors would dance a pas de deux and seem to expose a sensual side of adult complexity. It skirted line between the fragility of human connection and power struggles we all at some point face.
After two hours of sliding in and out of a fantasy world of wild interpretive dance performance, drinking libations from tiny bottles found in hidden drawers, it felt that I had been transported into Alice’s Wonderland right there in Brooklyn. It felt creepy and thrilling. My friends and I left bewildered, yet enchanted.
~Nina Granados
Sources:
The Junction Journal 