Shimmering into UCC’s Chapel of the Arts, five dancers create a trapezoid to begin Space Station’s presentation of Chaos: An Evening Length Dance Gallery by Sophia Spectre. As the lights come up, their hot pink sequined shirts throw light to Trixie Mattel’s upbeat dance mix “Solid Pink Disco" while the dancers begin a series of sweeping footwork and poses. The light changes to a deep blue as the dancers spread to a circle and begin sets of solos that reveal an inner world of each dancer. They frolic, sway, jump, and groove as I only imagine we all do in our bedrooms with the door shut and our favorite music turned up loud. This work is a clever opening for Chaos. It explores disco elements through a contemporary vehicle establishing a language about the rest of the gallery's content and ethos. Exuberance exists here and an appreciation for the ability to move is clear in the frivolity and fun of this work.
Momentarily interrupting the disco, Spectre struts into the space capturing the other dancers’ attention: she rolls her shoulders and performs a series of temple touching poses as Amanda Lepore sings “I don’t know much about clothes, but my hair looks fierce”. The dancers mimic the movement phrase and join together for a flowy adagio scattering leg extensions, Travoltas, and hip shakes across the stage. As the work ends, the dancers bubble and pony out of the chapel in their own disco party as Mattel’s mix fades into quiet.
Running back onstage, choreographer Sophia Spectre enters the space to introduce the gallery, its dancers, and the themes of the evening. She also provides us with ground rules: “This is narrative based dance theatre… [it is] very silly intentionally, so please laugh. It’s weird if you don’t” which elicits her own giggle alongside the audience. In addition to Spectre’s more theatrical pieces, she highlights that some of the work will be more abstract and up for interpretation in comparison to other pieces of work. Coming to the end of her speech, dancers run into the chapel and holler “Mom, watch this!” as they slide on their stomachs across the marley. Bewildered, Spectre looks at them, wraps up her speech, and exits as the dancers begin their next work Mom Watch This!.
Lying on their stomachs, the dancers look at each other, call out “Shamu”, and strike a bow pose. More dancers come on stage and they perform a series of poses and tricks repeating “Mom, watch this!”. One at a time they perform tricks for each other and subsequently ‘ooh and ahh’. They begin to call out different dance genres and perform common movements or phrases: “Modern” they call as rolls ensue. Coming together the dancers make a circle and begin showing off different dance moves. One dancer performs a series of well-executed ‘bad’ turns and upon landing remarks, “That was my bad side” to a chorus of “Of course it was!” from the watching dancers. When the next dancer finishes their solo a disembodied voice yells into the chapel, “That was terrible!” and they mutter back, “Well there goes my BFA” which evokes several chuckles from the audience. Each dancer presents a solo and garners the disembodied voice’s ire: “I hated it”; “The time step was nice, but otherwise terrible!”; “Boo”. Frustrated, the dancers point to a male audience member and encourage him to show a move. “That was brilliant” the voice calls when he finishes a spirited Bees Knees.
This tongue in cheek sketch was a favorite moment of the evening which simultaneously made a younger version of myself squirm. It showcased a familiar pressure of keeping up appearances within dance and how absurd the underlying conversation is about it. In conversation with Spectre, she noted this piece’s absurdity grew from the cast’s “organic conversation about being dancers in the era of social media… I wanted the audience to feel like they were inside a really silly conversation about dance, while still touching on significant problems…constantly not feeling good enough, pressure to perform tricks, the pressure to be perfect and the unfairness of who is seen as a real dancer and who is not”. The next work Gremlins featured sound excerpts from Sodikken’s “Redmagedon” and “Stadium A Race” by Mark Governor and Glenn Nishida, embodies Spectre’s neurodivergent neurons and neural pathways and how they “translate to ecolalia, stims, or general executive disfunction”. This upbeat work featured quick patterning representing brain function in contrast to weighted, sustained movement I interpreted as the output of the neural pathways. Ending this work, two dancers crawled out of the space with the other on their back which read as the closing down and pause of the brain for rest after a round of overstimulation. Closing the first half of the gallery, Spectre sets a desk and chair in the chapel before sitting down to begin Customer Service which Spectre describes as a vision of what “happens behind the scenes while that irritating hold music plays” when you are on hold with a company. Attempting to return a dress, Spectre begs the automated assistant to speak to a person who plainly replies, “Too bad, I can’t help with that”. While dancers enter the space, she eventually connects with a representative who puts her on and off hold while various smooth jazz songs reverberate through the chapel to ‘ease’ her waiting. Around her, the dancers perform serene, sweeping ballets while Spectre unravels. At one point, Spectre sinks into her chair and slides to the floor before being encouraged back into the chair and blown a kiss. Around the desk, the dancers prance in jubilance at her disaster, reach entreatingly towards her, and fist pump around her. Feeling like a spoof of every 2000’s movie montage and medicine commercial, the dancers reach their eyes and arms to the rafters while a soft yellow light shines down on them. As the song fades, the dancers exit the stage giving Spectre encouraging pats and one loud head kiss, but she remains defeated.
Opening the second half of the gallery was Virality, an exploration of internet culture, instant online community, and “the collective desire for genuine human connection”. Set to a mix of legendary Vines– “Free-Shavacado”, “Look at all those chickens”, et cetera– and various electronic melodies, this work zoomed into parasocial internet connections by creating cohesive vignettes around the Vine snippets, but a kind of ambiguous unison as electronic music played. The dancers didn’t feel as though they were dancing as a collective even when performing identical movement. Illuminated by blue light, the dancers worked in duets and trios, bumping into each other and sliding around each other which established a sort of pseudo-connection, but left them lacking complete integration with each other. The dancers’ glitchy movement quality further emphasized this lack by creating a sort of eerie detachment.
Spectre’s solo Peaceful Wrath investigated healing, anger, and the “[development] of long awaited peace”. Dressed in all black and set to the deep bass of “Jakyl” by True Widow, Spectre walks bent forward into the chapel before rolling up on a deep strum of the bass. Spectre juxtaposes careful, placed movement with tossed arms and legs alongside expansive pushing of the arms and legs. This spectrum counterbalanced themes of healing and anger while Spectre’s own performance sat in the middle. Her own gaze was internally set and seemingly unaware of viewers as she thrashed, pushed, and jumped through space. We witnessed a tussling process of explosion and settling. Softening with the music, Spectre swept her arms up, enveloppéd them in, and caressed her face before folding forward and leaving the space.
Closing the show was Gaspuh!, a delightful ghost hunt through the chapel featuring Scooby Doo inspired hijinks and three semi-friendly ghosts. Featuring three ghost hunters, they inspect the dark chapel with flashlights before taking turns shining them on themselves and grooving under the light. Together the hunters summon a slightly benevolent ghost, who enters stage and attempts to catch the hunters’ attention. Finally noticing her, they scream and begin inspecting her fearfully and attempt to hype themselves up: “We are literally professionals– we’ve got to chill out”. Two more ghosts enter the stage and the hunters pair off to perform mirrored duets with each other. What starts as curious observation swiftly changes; the ghosts surround one of the hunters, push their hands forward, and force the hunter down to the ground. They angrily slide and stomp around her until two of the ghosts drag her off stage. The lone ghost faces the two trembling hunters and she slowly walks towards them radiating malevolence. A few paces from them, she stops, smiles brightly, and waves before bouncing out of the chapel. The hunters sigh in relief, grab their flashlights, and plod offstage. An excellent bookend to the gallery, this comedy of errors after heavier themes and complex movement reinstated the values of this gallery and they showcased the Spectre’s thematic and choreographic range.
In all, Spectre’s gallery mixed contemporary movement with dance theatre to create a curious and delightfully absurd exploration of humanness at its most joyful, disconnected, exuberant, confused, and exhausted. I found it refreshing that this work explored heavy content while being infused by a fancifully created world. Crafted in this way, the audience enjoyed abstract movement while having clear purchase to join in on the gallery’s humorous bits and serious assertions. What I enjoyed most was that this gallery did not exist to soberly create dance, but rather create significance and address challenges through relation and humor. When much of dance exhumes and belabors depth it is refreshing to see heavy topics displayed through brightness and alongside joy.