Lawrence’s Dance Series has continuously invited fantastic guest performers to highlight their work to Lawrence students and the public. I adore viewing these performances; they lead to new insight on physicality, artistry and existence itself. It’s a lofty takeaway, I know, but there’s something so visceral in the way bodies can physically create experiences much larger than themselves.
This performance was no different. On Thursday, April 6 at 7 p.m., dancer, performer and filmmaker Tatyana Tenenbaum graced Esch Studio with “Garment of the Interior.” Tenenbaum performed alongside several Lawrentian performers: sophomores Atlas Wagner and Grace Wiersma, junior Tori Schneider, senior Shae Erlandson and dance instructor Margaret Sunghe Paek. The work is described in the program as “site responsive” and “vibrational,” asking, “How can this sensation orchestrate our bodies for a richer experience?”
The setup of the space played a crucial role in the audience’s viewing of this experience. Chairs curved in a semicircle facing towards the performance area. They canvassed the sunset through large windows and reflected on the Fox River. Several electronic elements, such as a loop pedal and microphone, littered the floor. A rope hung from the light grid, anchored by pink and fuchsia, glittering fabrics—a motif carried over in the performers’ outfits.
From the beginning, it was clear how influential Tenenbaum’s background in musical theater was to “Garment of the Interior.” She began with a group embrace: all performers held each other in a circle, swaying and singing dense harmonies together. The sun was just beginning to dip below the horizon line, coating the Esch Hurvis Studio in sweet, crepuscular serenity. We were entering a world unfamiliar yet nostalgic, free from expectation and looking inward towards our own “interiors.”
Tenenbaum then transitioned into a solo section. Her haunting riffs and scales layered together with the help of the loop pedal and microphone, reverberating much like her vibrational movement. The juxtaposition between her vibratos and straight tones mimicked the beckoning undercurrents of her rocking. She confessed with shaking knees, “How do we find our way if it is not remembered?”
It was as if Tenenbaum was starting a firestorm around her, stirring and storming around the rope and fabric architecture with rigid passion. The Lawrentian performers then joined and carried on these themes scored by more of Tenenbaum’s fragmented loops, feedback peppering through the speakers. They leaned, they echoed, they hugged and let go. It grew more intense as the performance progressed.
This peaked at a more organized moment of movement in an otherwise contemporary dance experience. Four of the performers bloomed in and out of square shapes, utilizing their bodies as petals. The other two mirrored their movement, inversely collapsing in. It was an exchange underpinned by a murmuring of “it grows.” Steadily, this transitioned into another organized section of three-step stomps and spins, holding out their hands, chanting “yai-dai-dai.”
As the performers’ tempo and vigor increased, they became breathless, laughing, leaning slowly into silence. What had been a period of incredibly dense sound, introspection, and motion came to a standstill at once. The audience and I were frankly left awestruck. I vividly remember looking over at a friend who I viewed the performance with and mouthing “oh my God.”
To ground us back in the present moment, Tenenbaum closed the performance with another solo effort with Schneider, who was helming the soundboard. Tenenbaum wandered through a rumination on ambition, pulling down the rope and collecting the fabric near her, singing like a caged bird. It was an apt commentary on her debt towards passion, desiring silence but being unable to produce it herself. Again, she pulsed and shook as with the first performance, but her final, still gaze felt certain: she had hope.
Following this concluding performance, Tenenbaum and the Lawrentian guest performers answered several questions the audience members had. An older woman stated how she “didn’t get the performance,” which led to a wonderful discourse on how everyone’s experience with art is different and individual. Truly, Tenenbaum’s “Garment of the Interior” epitomizes this notion, another great showcase of idiosyncratic artistry at Lawrence.