This Poisoned Sea

This Poisoned Sea, guided by dramaturg Pip Buining; developed by the QL2 troop dancing it; and choreographed by Claudia Alessi, Eliza Sanders, and Jack Ziesing, uses The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’s references to an albatross and the consequences of its destruction as metaphor for humans’ heedless destruction of many universally known forms of ocean wildlife through the medium of wanton pollution.

Though I wouldn’t say that a great deal of emotion appears in the dances constituting this work, the dancers’ commitment to the work’s message — the necessity that individual and societal action halt marine destruction — is easy to sense.  The entire 30-strong troop’s discipline in storing in body memory these extended abstract dances, in absorbing the means of achieving surprisingly close coordination, and even in its development of the albatross metaphor for the vulnerable keystone species of the marine ecosystem upon which planetary life depends underscores that commitment and communicated to the audience the love and concern for planetary life that underlie it.

A notable relationship between the soundtrack and the dance styles and timing was attractive in its unusualness.  Though the soundtrack varied from subtle soundscape to highly repetitive and percussive electronica, the dance steps, at times borrowing from hip-hop and at others positively balletic, bore no fixed relationship to the music.  Timing signals frequently not being in evidence in the music, it was all the more impressive, then, that the entirety of the troop on stage at one time would pause and then move in perfect unison.  Such unison is often helpful in overcoming credence in the impression that various dancers are improvising against a musical background providing few or no markers.  But the choreography here, with strong sidelighting emphasising well the oceanic dance formations, conveyed marvellously the ocean’s dynamism and majesty as well as its susceptibility to devastation.

Whatever process is responsible for its success, QL2 has, in This Poisoned Sea, maintained a traditionally prodigious performance standard.  More power to its collective knees.

John P. Harvey