Kiki Samko is a revelation in Heart & Dagger’s lovely
STILL, NOW (playing @ BCA through May 13th). Katie Bender’s theater
piece is, ostensibly, an elegy to life with stage-4 cancer ... but it’s more
about the emancipation of the corporeal.
Bender’s dance/theater narrative is inspired by Butoh, an
extension of dance which reaches beyond form and substance, eschewing the
gestural language of traditional dance. Amy Meyer, who deftly directs STILL,
NOW explains that “In Butoh, one does not move the body. The body feels from
its inner depths and is moved.”
Because dance is at the heart of the piece, Samko and Colin
McIntyre perform a rapturous, undulating love duet. Later on, the entire
company swirls around Samko, engulfing her (in cancer cells, maybe, or in
solidarity): as they circle her, propelling her around, I could not help but
think of the iconic Matisse painting.
The subject matter may
call WIT to mind (same disease, same cold clinicians, same destructive
treatments) but where WIT is cerebral, STILL, NOW is visceral. Unburdening is
its transformation.