A woman in a bright red dress makes a grand gesture. She then realizes that they are watching her and suddenly she seems like a squirrel that she has realized that she is not alone. She tries to make another grand gesture but she is hindered when the bubble wrap under her feet explodes. She is soon joined by a woman in a shiny black dress who seems trapped in the same situation, seeking elegance only to have that ideal pop, over and over again. The second woman hunches over and hyperventilates.
This is how we meet Lisa Fagan and Lena Engelstein in their experimental dance and theater work “Deepe Darknesse.” At Collapsable Hole, the scruffy West Village space where this absurd exercise was performed this weekend as part of New York's Live Arts Live Artery festival, they stand close to audience members and continually make eye contact with them. This increases the feeling of danger. You don't know what these nuts could do.
First, they get into an insane drill team routine, kicking and breathing hard. Every once in a while, a 1960s Italian pop song comes on (it's “Stasera” by Cocki Mazzetti) and their frenetic dancing takes on some vitality and flirtatious charm. But not for long. Interruption is the constant of the show.
During the periodic blackouts we learn that Fagan and Engelstein are not alone. Hannah Mitchell stars as a serious stagehand, applying too much makeup to women in headlight light. The performance space is a rehearsal studio that hasn't been done up much and the artists make the most of it. They take food and wine from the refrigerator and consume it next to a microphone. (Trips to the bathroom offstage are also amplified.) They use the microwave. They are standing at the sink.
Oh, and all of this and the title of the work have something to do with “The Golden Ass” by Apuleius, the ancient Roman picaresque novel in which the protagonist suffers various tribulations, often interrupted by other stories, after being transformed. on a donkey At one point, Engelstein, clutching a loaf of bread in each hand, attempts to recite an episode from the novel in an archaic translation, but has to keep asking for his lines, which Mitchell provides in a Siri-like voice.
This is funny, but Apuleius is ultimately more material, more bubble wrap to pop. Fagan and Engelstein use it less for its meaning and thematic resonance (humiliating transformation) than as a structural model. “Deepe Darknesse” is certainly picaresque. Its randomness is carefully crafted but also feels free and spontaneous at points. Its greatest pleasures are the small, temporally resolved actions that function as punchlines, as when, as the two women struggle in a cantilevered balance, Engelstein uses one foot to lift a cigarette off the ground and plant it in Fagan's mouth.
These performers are fully committed comedians, unafraid to turn into donkeys and maintain the tension of potential danger. The recklessness with which they throw a laptop at you makes you worry a little about them and yourself. This tension helps hold the disparate parts together, and “Deepe Darknesse” develops its own crazy logic. After a recitation of an ancient Roman novel falls apart, what deus ex machina could save the show? Another Cocki Mazzetti pop song, of course.
“Deep darkness”
Until Monday at Collapsable Hole; newyorklivearts.org.
