Friday, February 24, 2006

The Stranger - Slog:

Dark Room, the Crispin Spaeth dance piece playing Fridays and Saturdays (three shows per night) through March 4 at Western Bridge. It’s about a half hour long, you sit on bean bags, the place is pitch black, and you’re given night-vision goggles. But the dancers aren’t. They can’t see a damn thing. It’s incredible they’ve figured out how to dance together in the dark — and it’s interesting the way the floor becomes another dance partner, since it’s the only thing they can count on. The music is restrained beeps, beats, shudderings — I kept thinking of Radiohead’s Amnesiac, minus words — and the total effect is spectral and insomniac. When the goggles can’t find any light in the room whatsoever, they fill with this snowy fuzz. After the show, my date and I went out and stood on the train tracks outside Western Bridge and tried to recreate some of the things the dancers had done, but even with the advantage of a nearby streetlight, we couldn’t.