October 24, 2014
Last Sunday night at 7:30, The Emerson Literary Society brought Catherine Alice Wright and Co. to the Blood Fitness and Dance Center for a lei’d back evening of performance art. At its core, the performance is a travel agency’s brochure of marketable otherness from America’s favorite non-contiguous state. It’s all lilting ukulele chords, volcanic odes to Goddess Pele, and “alohaaaa” in sing-song; it’s waves breaking endlessly (on the projector-screen) and the Buddhist sense of comfort so conveniently embodied by Israel Kamakawiwo’ole. Despite, the show cannot be said to be appropriative–the dancing is too good–and besides, the use of Hawaii and Hawaii-centric themes are merely the vehicle for the show’s narrative heart-blood. The audience waits, the lights have been dimmed to a dull half-glow. Seated and posed away from the crowd, Wright is the witchdoctor of light and shadow, of song and dance. Her silhouette shadow-dances above the projection screen on which rain ripples. Her garb is both tribalistic and steampunk to the point of excessiveness: air-brushed tattoos run down her back, arms, and chest, magnetic piercings dangle from her nose, a kind of tambourine takes the place of an anklet.
Ponderous and dissonant, the chords of Natasha Khan’s “Anahata Song” fall as Wright leaves her seat, beginning the show. As Wright flexes and gyrates in time with the music, her role as shaman, as manipulator over image becomes apparent. She lifts the ukulele above her head; in blackened silhouette the act seems quasi-religious, the fluidity of organic shadow contrasts with the static, computer-generated looping of the rainwater, suggesting a diametrical opposition between human and non, creator and created, artist and art-subject. There’s a reverence for the artist’s domain and their creative potential.
What followed was a suite of songs and dance focused on the tenderest and most torturous of human emotions: love. Each act interprets the capacity for and the flexibility of what we call love; among them is “Island Love,” “Tough Love,” “Vulnerable Love,” “Brave Love,” and “Shared Love.” As the narrative glue begins to set in, Hawaii as the inspirational backdrop becomes more and more of a façade. The setting’s a convenient expedient, an embodiment of our assimilative tendencies to view the pacific islands as a pre-packaged bundles of “positive” emotions (warmth and music, longevity and tranquility, sun and sex, etc.) that just so happens to correlate with our intuitive understanding of love.
Through song, dance, film, costume and ukulele, Wright channels and celebrates the different flavors of love. When she strums on the ukulele, candidly inveighing against her ex, old love turns sour. As volcanoes erupt and magma streams down the screen, an impassioned, consumptive love rages. In Brave Love, Wright interprets love’s ability for metamorphosing body and mind. After a struggle and an (un?)intentional nip-slip, she disentangles herself from one particularly smothering costume, revealing silky blue robes suggestive of a butterfly. At the same time, she emerges from the dark of the cave and the stage lights up in triumph of her ascendance. The conclusion is happily lackadaisical: a recording of Kamakawiwo’ole’s “Over the Rainbow/What A Wonderful World” plays over a slideshow of Hawaiian locales.
The performance emphasized without a doubt that love we can transcend time, body, and society.
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