Vida at Fringe Art Space is an original Production by Open Scene. The choreographer is Ana Cuellar whose work I have admired for years. The show features cellist Jamie Clark. The cellos somber tones resonated throughout. A rear projection screen offered quick changes of scenery. The program noted that the show is a mesmerizing musical journey with a tag line of Embrace your Emotions.
Theresa Bejarano and Marie Saad built the show around the advice of a mental health counselor Victoria Henry. I liked the beginning moments of the show, where a voice over stated most stories begin in darkness. The Birth scrolled across the screen in elegant Victorian handwriting. A female dance curled up on stage in the fetal position. I felt there might be enough time to sketch her so I jumped right in.
What followed were flashes of childhood joy. Learning to walk and then learning to tumble then learning to love. When the backlight projector was too bright in my eyes, I used my baseball cap to block the light so I could focus on sketching members of the audience. I noticed Fringe Marketing Director Desiree Montes bobbing her head to the beat of the music. This is something I invariably do while I am sketching. It is part of the reason I sit rather far back in an audience because I don’t want to distract with my involuntary movement as I sketch. It makes any drawing flow out of my hand much faster.
This was a very bilingual production which I liked. I studied Spanish using Duolingo after the Pulse Nightclub tragedy but I didn’t keep up my studies after oral histories became rare. There were about six or seven video testimonials that were projected after the initial dance performance. Since I was sketching I didn’t try and read the captions in English. On occasion I would recognize a word but never enough to get full context of what was being said. My primary objective through that section of the show was to get the audience that I had sketched to fall back into darkness.
First love had a danger illuminated in red with a long bolt of fabric. When the stage was illuminated red I burst into action. Up until them the show had been very dark with greys and blues. There were two redheads in the front row so I let the reds seep into the audience. Illustrations form Lisa Aisato were projected to help forward the emotions of the moment. The show didn’t have a linear story line but it certainly featured life moments from birth through love through the last scene which had the dancer curled up again this time holding a solitary candle.
At the end I felt like I wanted more. I checked my program thinking there might be an intermission. I was the last to leave, still hoping there might be more. Having missed the video testimonials I must have missed some of the heart of the show. I liked the interdisciplinary aspect of the show. I love that the visual arts got to play a part in the grand experiment.