Red Light/Green Light:
See the Music, Hear the Dance

by Barbejoy A. Ponzio

"1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10 ... Red light! Stop. Freeze. No, no, go back, you are moving. Yes, you were!! You too, go back. I saw your arm move. Yes it did. Go Back!" Remember playing Red Light/Green Light? Trying to move forward as fast as you could to tag the counter on the back before he/she turned around to yell "Red Light!"?

On Halloween Eve at the Old Covert Buick Showroom, a company of dancers was playing Red Light/Green Light, to a score of tuba, violin, clarinet, and cello, composed by Walter Thompson. It was more than just a game, though. This Red Light/Green Light was Ariel Dance Theatre's artistic interpretation of the existence of continuous time. Andrea Ariel, artistic director, and dancers Ellen Bartel, Mary Catherine Jones, Dixon Mena, Luis Manuel Narvaez, and Teresa Tipping treated the audience to their experience of exploration through a choreographed dance. As the dance moved forward, it fell back, and as it moved back, the dance fell forward. The movement phrases were repeated inside and out, backward and forward, fast and furious, slow and dreamy, yet always returning to the beginning, not really the beginning or the end. A backlash of movement that spoke, "Here I go again and again." Like life, hurling us forward, yet we fall back remembering the past, and as the past moves us backward, we fall forward by living in the present.

The dancers may have been exploring the existence of continuous time, but it was time which was at the mercy of the dancers. Red Light/Green Light lasted approximately 30 minutes, which did not hamper the dancers' outstanding performances. Challenged by the ever-changing dynamic spatial designs and floor patterns, they attacked each phrase with amazing clarity and each movement with exquisite command. A most impressive display of powerful technique summoned by unyielding demands of the choreography. It was like looking at six spinning tops that slowly relinquished their propulsive momentum with beautiful simplicity.

Halloween Eve's second treat was Walter Thompson's Sound Painting, a system of improvisational performance developed by Thompson, who conducts the improvisation through a vocabulary of 680 gestures, each of which indicates a different type of improvisation that is desired of a performer, performers, or, in some cases, the audience. Thompson's dynamic conducting was akin to the magical conjuring of a sorcerer. His gestural dance elicited creative, humorous, outlandish responses from his orchestra of sound painters: "Shrimp salad appeals to me. A routinely directed hoarse opera. The undead. The monster is here. Blood fresh blood. This is a story about a carnivorous plant."

In Nosferatu, a piece influenced by F. W. Murneau's 1927 silent vampire film, actors, dancers, musicians, and singers played with and off each other to improvise a symphonic horror story filled with a palette of music, text, and choreography. "I could eat those flies all day. They are so good. I like to pull their wings off and see them squirm!" exclaimed a sound painter. Teresa Tipping replied by exquisitely executing a back flip and then a back walkover held for minutes until another sound painter asked, "What is she doing?" With sweeping arm signals, Thompson's wizardry even brought the audience to life in a vocal romp with the orchestra.

This extraordinary blend of music and dance was an exhilarating aural and visual experience. See the music, hear the dance, and share in Ariel Dance Theatre and Walter Thompson Orchestra's enchanting, engaging, and captivating collaborative achievement.