Before arriving at the Red Eye Theater, I was under the impression that I was going to a punk show. Instead, I got three pieces of experimental dance in a tiny Minneapolis theater. Needless to say, I was completely unprepared when three dancers — faces painted white with chalky makeup, each carrying a different element of a porcelain tea set — began their set of slow, methodical, painful writhings to a soundtrack of helicopter rotors, news snippets and distorted nature sounds. Definitely not a punk show.
Joining me at this performance were Mac students and partners in theatrical appreciation and critique, Carly Hess ’28, and Adi Toé ’28, whose cogent commentaries have been integrated into this article.
This first act was a Butoh performance by dancers Masanari Kawahara, Malia Burkhart and Lelis Brito. Butoh, a dance form I was completely unfamiliar with before the performance, is a form of Japanese dance theater emphasizing grotesque and contortionist movements. With slow intentionality, Butoh dancers convey suffering through their bodies. Often, they shave their heads and paint themselves white head to toe.
One of the most powerful elements of the act was the soundtrack. Hess remarked on the bizarre yet impactful mix of ambience, sound effects and music accompanying the piece, noting “sounds of brutality against legal observers and people in Minnesota, and news reporters talking of the brutality.”
The climax of the first piece arrived as the dancers came together, combining their components of the tea set and finally finding peace in each other’s company. Toé felt a deep sense of connection, remarking: “At the end, the sharing of the tea was like, ‘yes, there’s the gravity,’ ‘yes, there’s horrible f–ked up people,’ but we’re still all human, we should still all share, and love each other.”
Hess said, “Since most of the first piece was this tight and uncomfortable and visceral grossness, when I finally had a moment of respite, I felt the ability to breathe again.”
What followed were two more powerful, playful, passionate, provocative, puzzling, polyphonic (so much p-alliteration I could go forever) dance sets that I felt truly lucky to witness in an audience of about 30- 40 people. “Tiger Balm 8” was the eighth iteration (if you can believe it) of a series in which choreographers and troupes debut their unfinished work to a small audience at a heavily discounted rate (in this case, an optional donation of up to $20). While the first set is the piece that Toé, Hess, and I can’t stop talking about, the other two deserve recognition as brilliant pieces as well.
The second set, an incredibly energetic synchronized dance set composed by Romero Cannady, was, in Toé’s words, “a joyful expression of spirituality and religion.”
The dance set, composed of an all Black cast of dancers and an upbeat, religiously themed soundtrack, with sounds of organs and a gospel choir, seemed to celebrate an intersection of race and religion. Toé continued: “A lot of the time, there’s a lot of trauma surrounding religion, but in a lot of Black churches, there’s good community and love.”
The piece felt uplifting and energetic, and more than any other set in the show, I was in awe of the skill and coordination of the dancers.
The final and most memorable set was a one-man burlesque dance by “international boylesque sensation” (according to the Red Eye Theater website) Tré Da Marc. Toé eloquently summarized his feelings (and mine as well) while in Café Mac doing an impression of the dance himself, “The more clothed he was, the less cool it was.” He continued, while imitating the graceful curtsy motion that Da Marc executed, “Once I saw his butt, I was like, yeah, this is fire.”
The show dragged me headfirst through several brick walls of emotion, the jarring transitions from grotesque tea-based body-horror, to joyous, fast-paced coordinated dance, to expressive and flirtatious burlesque left me with a mix of feelings that I couldn’t quite put into words. And yet, to my horror, I was asked to put these feelings into words. You see, the exchange of the “Tiger Balm” series is that composers and artists share their unfinished work and receive feedback from the audience. I didn’t know this, and as someone deathly afraid of audience participation, being asked to circle up and share my thoughts with the rest of the audience (and more frighteningly, the entire cast and crew of each of the three performances) caught me completely off guard. Luckily, the questions weren’t too hard, or maybe they were very hard, depending on your stance on questions like, “How did these pieces make you feel?”
When the microphone finally got to me, I shared a few half-baked, semi-coherent thoughts and got my palm sweat all over it, but I got a few nods of agreement. Other people in the audience spoke frustratingly eloquently for how little time they had to formulate their opinions. They were probably more prepared than I was; after all, I thought I was going to a punk show. In hindsight, I would’ve remarked on the roller-coaster of emotions that the three performances pulled me through, the clever use of sound and lighting, the impact of the experimental forms of dance, and, of course, the power of Tré Da Marc’s butt.
When I asked Toé, who was equally unprepared, about his experience sharing his perspective in a group setting, he said: “I kind of liked it, because no matter who you were, they still included us in the talking circle, and that’s really how you build community. We are now members of that community.”
Despite the brief terror of unexpectedly being asked to speak to other people, the whole experience was very worthwhile and provided interesting perspectives that undoubtedly helped me understand and appreciate the works much more completely. Certainly, for the price and the quality of the performances, it was a fair trade-off. I will most certainly be going to events at the Red Eye Theater again; it really is an amazing space where the audience can interact intimately with incredible performances for extremely low prices. Additionally, most of the other shows put on by the theater are more conventional and don’t involve audience engagement. Perhaps you’ll see Carly Hess, Adi Toé, and me at Tiger Balm 9.
