Friday, December 6, 2019

Review: Traumnovelle

The intimate site-specific piece has superb choreography but struggles to fully use the space.
I enter the code to the front door of the apartment building on St. Marks Place in Manhattan and take the elevator up. There is a bike mounted on the wall next to apartment 5F and a potted plant tucked into the corner next to the staircase. I could be going to a yoga studio or visiting somebody in this average-looking East Village apartment building. But I am here for an immersive show.
What I am about to see is Traumnovelle, a site-specific dance collaboration between Adam Barruch and Chelsea Bonosky, the duo performing under the name Anatomiae Occultii. Besides her many other accomplishments in the world of dance, Bonosky brings to the table her extensive experience performing in Sleep No More while Baruch has choreographed an immersive show for Celebrity Cruises. But this dark piece is the duet’s first stab at immersive production. Traumnovelle, demonstrates a familiarity with the form but ends up somewhat timid when it comes to working with both the site and the audience.

photo by Alice Chacon
Traumnovelle invites an intimate audience of 13 to enter a private apartment. Inside, there is a red loveseat with an unnamed couple sitting on it (Barruch and Bonosky). The shirtless man wears black pants, while she wears a copper slip dress and smokes a cigarette with a green filter. Only her knee pads indicate the theatrical nature of the scene, otherwise their appearance is domestic, yet elegant. As smoke from her cigarette fills the room, the audience members scatter, trying out the available viewing angles. Before entering, we were instructed to “explore the space without touching any props or actors,” but the appartment only consists of one room with a bathroom adjacent to it, so the “exploring” is over before it can really begin. This reminds me of how important every single aspect of the immersive experience is and how crucial the wording of the onboarding might be.
The man heads into the bathroom, turns on the water, and undresses, before the door is shut and we are left alone with the woman. She takes a seat at a table covered in a thick layer of rose petals. There is a small vase holding a few red roses in the middle. The woman beheads each flower with scissors and then pours two glasses of wine at the bar, putting a rose petal in one of them. Time seems to slow down, guided by the somber ambient music. The man returns. The dance of their relationship intensifies.
Although it is not immediately clear what is going on between the two characters, watching Barruch and Bonosky dance is mesmerizing. Their connection is remarkable, which is not so surprising for two collaborators who have been working together for 10 years. Their technique is impeccable and it’s breathtaking to peer at them from such a close distance that you can even hear them breathe. Their deliberate movements start to break away from the efficient practicality of everyday gestures (smoking, taking a shower, picking up glasses from the shelf) little by little; the mundane soon transforms into the poetic.
It is a bit like listening to people speaking a language which I don’t understand but still enjoy being around it. As I ease in, I start imagining that I do understand a “word” or two using whatever context I have available. I make the analogy to listening to a foreign language deliberately, as there are two spoken monologues in Traumnovelle which are heard as voiceovers through the sound system. The dancers “translate” them using the duet’s signature “kinetic gestural language.” I don’t understand ASL but some of the gestures, based upon what I observe, look like they might have been taken from the vocabulary of sign language, due to the pacing and the parts of the body that are used and pointed at by the performers. So, when used, the spoken word catches me by surprise; it takes me a moment to finally tune into it. While I understand the words separately, I don’t understand them taken as a whole. It’s not easy to grasp the meaning of the abstract text in the piece, and, to my surprise, I find body language more helpful in this regard. After the spoken monologues finish, I can’t help but suspect the entire dance stands in for a concrete text; I do my best to try to decode the movements I observed. Needless to say, as much fun as this game is, it is a fruitless effort. I am back on the seesaw of ambivalent meanings trapped between the choreography and my imagination.
Traumnovelle plays on the duality of the familiar and unfamiliar, immersing the audience in the atmosphere of a lucid dream. “Traumnovelle means “dream story” and is also the name of the 1926 novella by Austrian writer Arthur Schnitzler that partly inspired the dance piece. In that story, two married young partners each go through their own journeys of reawakened sexuality, bittered by the guilt of desiring somebody other than their spouse. In Anatomiae Occultii’s Traumnovelle, the story is much vaguer but it seems to be revolving around similar topics of desire and infidelity. This production frees the audience from the domestic drama of social norms and moral choices found in the original piece, and instead offers a journey into the deeper grounds of the subconscious, the place where images rule over words. Some of those images from Traumnovelle are stuck in my head days after seeing the show, such as the moment when the woman scoops all the rose petals from the table and drops them slowly, leaving a “blood” trail on the wooden floor.
The venue itself, Arts on Site, contributes to the haunting atmosphere of the piece but also competes for status as the star of the show. This apartment looks more like a film set than a real habitat, thanks to its exposed brick walls and tall windows with back-lit greenery, and a monumental wooden bar counter, all enhanced by dramatic dim lighting. The setting looks like an eccentric man-cave with a 70’s vibe, which doesn’t entirely feel like it “belongs” to our characters. The duo floats in and out of the space, figuratively speaking. About half the time, their dance has a clear orientation towards one side of the room, making the experience very proscenium-like. These moments where the site isn’t engaged make me think of the venue as being arbitrarily chosen. On the contrary, some of the most beautiful choreography bits are the ones that actually use the features of the space, like a sequence that happens on the bar itself. The massive wooden bar counter becomes a “stage.” The lighting fixtures hanging above it frame the action and create an eerie lighting effect when brought into motion. The interior and the choreography finally become one. Unfortunately only about half of the scenes incorporate the environment in a meaningful or aesthetically interesting way.
The scenes that were oriented toward the “fourth wall” also made me aware of the awkwardness of my position as a voyeur. While nervously shifting a few feet left and right along the perimeter of the room, I am worried that I might obstruct the view of other audience members or be in the way of the performers. In immersive theatre, I enjoy both being confined to one perspective as well as the “dance” of moving around performers and other audience members. But, in Traumnovelle, this “dance” was neither here nor there. Interestingly, the narrative itself has the potential to accommodate the role of the audience, but does not utilize it. Both spoken monologues discuss the “presence” of other people when we are alone or have sex with our partner. Their “ghosts” might be there in the form of a body mark, a smell, or a stray thought. I only made this connection post-factum, but what a potent thread it could have been in the show. With all the beautifully ambiguous poetry that Traumnovelle contains, it lacks structuring when it comes to working with the audience, at least for now.I sincerely hope Anatomiae Occultii will continue their exploration of site-specific choreography and weaving the audience into their stories. It is a great pleasure to watch such superb dancers perform, no matter the format. But like with anything beautiful, I would love to be able to get closer, to bond outside the traditional model of actor and observer.
(This review was published on NoProscenium.com on 12/5)