The Seldoms Put On A Politically Charged Performance In The Memorial Union
By Caitlin Geurts, Arts Staff Writer
On the second floor of The Memorial Union, a group of dancers and performers wriggle around one another while rock music and radio clips blast throughout the performance space. The audience appears to feel somewhat uneasy, but they are no doubt fascinated by the spectacle in front of them.
The Seldoms are a Chicago-based dance company that spent September twenty-seventh through the twenty-ninth performing in the terrace’s Playcircle. The company put on Rock Citizen, a movement politics show that takes the audience from the sixties to the seventies to think about modern day America.
Throughout the performance the six featured dancers acknowledged the audience, periodically provoking them with questions. Several times they asked if their performance was making the audience members uncomfortable. They would then proceeded to grit their teeth and growl in protestation at the nearest spectators, successfully arousing discomfort.
The company disturbed the audiences’ comfort zone not only in what they said but in what they did. A recurring prop was a web of bras strung together (what they hail a “brascape”), which at one point was hanging on the wall, and the next moment being lifted over the audience members heads. They touched and melded their bodies together, lifting and pushing one another around the small stage. Meanwhile, to add to this obscure ambience, various radio and television clips from the nineteen sixties and seventies loudly looped, mirroring the bizarre movements onstage. It was truly an immersive experience on which the audience always had something to focus.
The intention of this loud, aggressive, movement-fueled performance was to focus on the relationship between the personal and political in our society, challenging viewers to ask questions about how far our society has truly progressed. While this company may use one of the more unconventional techniques to convey their message, they certainly proved their point and challenged their audience. So to The Seldoms, congratulations (you made your point) and thank you for a strikingly unique show.