“Dark Matters:” Uncanny and Uncontrolled
In a Kidd Pivot performance recorded for On the Boards TV in Seattle, WA on February 18, 2011, Crystal Pite’s theatrical choreography for “Dark Matters” presents a stage world populated by puppets, shadowy figures in black, and dancers who push and pull each other across the stage. As you watch, you are invited to question whether any of the identifiably human figures onstage are really in control, as the theme of the “maker” who no longer commands their creation flows throughout the performance. Watching a recording removes some of the sense of threat when the performance feels unpredictable or ominous, yet the camera work undoubtedly re-enforces the production’s delightful visual tricks.
In the beginning of part one, a pendant light hovering over the table upstage center clicks off and on to suggest a time-lapsed construction process. Underscored by the sound of a thunderstorm, the creator seated at the table frantically hacks away at sheets of cardboard with metal sheers, snipping out a human silhouette. (lights out, lights up) He holds up a head, with a human profile, attached to a simplified torso, showing us a figure that is progressing from two-dimensions into three. (light out, lights up) He kneels on the floor, laying the jointed legs of the puppet over his own knees, as if testing their action in relation to his own. (lights out, lights up) Finally, the creator lifts the full puppet up off the work table, allowing its limbs to dangle in mid-air. (lights out, lights up) In an unexpected twist, shadowy puppeteers dressed all in black have taken up the rods of the finished puppet in the darkness, endowing it with rebellious life. To follow the Frankenstein reference given in the production description from On the Boards, “it’s ALIVE!” The puppet stands looking up at its creator who is no longer in control. Whereas metaphors usually invoke the powerlessness of the puppet, the dynamic is reversed when the creator fails to become the manipulator.
In this opening sequence, the artist is driven to create, but also faced with their inability to control the work after its completion. By extension, Pite seems to be reflecting on some classical artist’s dilemmas - How do you make time to create without feeling like a project has taken over your life? Once the work is completed, and put in front of an audience, how do you cope with the fact that you cannot fully predict how it will be received or where it might travel after it leaves your studio? In this case, it seems that the maker is, in many ways, at the mercy of their art.
According to the Kidd Pivot website, the show was inspired by Pite’s “fascination with the unseen forces at work on mind and body.” The shadow players are reminiscent of Japanese Bunraku, and normally the convention would be that they are invisible onstage. Instead, in this production, they become the embodiment of Pite’s mysterious forces. At the end of part one, they literally tear down the walls, transforming the stage into a half-lit, color-saturated world where they haunt the remains of the collapsed set. During this interlude, the audience watches one inky figure pick their way through the detritus, stepping through a tangled mass of metal frames and disheveled canvas, while cradling a second shadow body that they scooped up out of the wreck. Reaching center, the moving shadow turns sharply down stage and throws the body roughly onto the pile. It is a trick, of course. I am ashamed to say I gasped (and watching from home there was no one next to me to gauge the reaction against). Yet, in a production that plays with the uncanny by showing us puppets and shadows that live and people pulled by invisible strings, it felt appropriate to lose track of which figure was living and which figure was faux.
The power struggle continues in the brightly-lit dance space of part two. In this sequence, performed on an open floor, plain-clothes dance partners throw each other in and out of balance with the controlled violence of stage-combatants. In the final duet, one dancer seems to “stitch” breath into another - pulling them along by unseen heart-strings as swelling music takes over for the machine-sounds and sharp silences that defined the previous sections. It becomes the final, surprisingly tender, variation on the theme. From beginning to end, this performance presents the act of creation as a burden, a battle, and a love affair by turns. The final segment seems poised to remind us that while control can be sinister, surrender – or even better, trust – is tender and sweet.