Melissa Mancini
BRIAR, the new work from seymour::dancecollective, opened with performers warming up on stage. My excitement began while watching the dancers practice different inversions and breaking tricks. It was comforting and fascinating to watch the quintet get ready. It set a tone with the audience that we are all going to be in this experience together. While I didn’t realize the specific significance in the moment, as the piece progressed I became very appreciative of and impressed by this detail. Personal anecdotes from the performers anchor BRIAR, so by setting the scene with the dancers warming up and being themselves and in casual outfits, we were softly placed into a pedestrian and conversational environment from which to experience the dance. While something small like this might not seem like much on the surface, I often find that some of the smallest choices can have significant impacts.
Director Chafin Seymour collaborated with Styles Alexander, Davarria Ford, Abigail Hinson, Z Jackson, Johnny Nguyen, Danielle Noda to choreograph BRIAR, and the collaborators make up the cast with the exception of Alexander and Jackson. There were sections of group movement, solos, as well as partnering and contact improvisation. Each dancer took a turn at the microphone and told a personal story or anecdote, while the other dancers continued moving around them. One of the most memorable visuals was early on in the piece where the ensemble started in a line on stage right and at different paces began to move across the stage. They each danced in their own way and on their own time, first alone and then slowly interacting with one another. A beautiful metaphor for life; we might be on our own journeys but we are not alone.
One of my favorite things to see is the melding of two or more different movement vocabularies. I could not have been more delighted with the beautiful blend of so many genres of dance in this piece. There was modern, contemporary, breaking, house, capoeira, even moshing and club style dancing. Aside from the impressive range of styles themselves, in a piece discussing race and specifically Black culture, the use of these styles speaks volumes. One of the topics discussed in the piece was how countless aspects of Black culture have been white washed over the years. So to see such historical Black styles of dance used as a means of expressing and discussing various racial issues was very powerful and effective.
It is important to not only give people the opportunity to share their experiences, but to be given a platform in which to share with depth and detail. This show was a beautiful example of that. In the era of social media where everything is shared in bites and clips, so much gets lost in translation. Watching seymour::dancecollective made me feel very grateful to be part of a dance community that is supportive of choreography as rich in perspective and craft as BRIAR.
Melissa Mancini moved to the Bay Area in 2012 for college at USF where she majored in Performing Arts & Social Justice (Dance Concentration) and minored in Fine Arts. She has been a member of several Bay Area dance communities ever since, including being a regular patron of ODC Theater.
In “BRIAR” Metaphor And History Dance was originally published in ODC.dance.stories on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.