A Trip to the Theatre

My friend, in a fabulous display of procrastination had to see a theater production before Saturday so she could write a paper about whatever production she saw. As it turned out there was only one show left. So Friday, she and I proceeded to Ball State University Theatre to watch Icons in Motion. We gave the girl at the door our tickets and found our seats and waited for the show to start, which took a surprisingly long time. The program showed that the show would be divided into seven separate dances, each with its own cast of dancers, choreographers and its own theme.

After browsing the program and talking with a few of the audience members my patience began to wear thin. Most of the audience members around me had started checking their phones and watches. The show started twenty minutes late due to “technical difficulties.” Twenty minutes past the start time, the curtain rose and the first dance began.

The first dance was to an Italian folksong. The dancers, in flowing dresses danced across the stage telling the story of the choreographer’s interpretation of the female identity. The second dance was the dancer’s interpretation of the complexities of thought within the human mind. A patron of the arts and of dance especially, that dance even for me, was a stretch. The dancer spent the majority of the dance gyrating and rolling on the stage like an insect. In the middle of the dance, she ran of the stage and the audience not sure whether to clap, looked at each other awkwardly. Then she ran back onstage and seemed to do the dance a second time before becoming still on the ground. After that I began to lose my focus. The next dance showed two couples dancing through the night. The couples danced around each other on the stage in a very fluid pattern, however one couple always went through the motions a little faster than the other, which was slightly distracting. The final dance before the intermission was a short story showing a segment of Billy Holiday’s life. One dancer read from Billy’s biography and played narrator. As he spoke, the dancers told the story he read through dance. This was the most interesting of the performances, but I couldn’t sit through the rest of the event. I was just so uninterested in the show, which to be fair, could have been due to lack of sleep. I left during intermission.