It's Happening!

Fact: I dislike extensive program notes. I think they mute the dance. The dance should speak for itself. Down with program notes!

Now that that's out of the way, let me praise every other aspect of "Once More, Again, One," Hana van der Kolk's latest creation at Five Thirty Three. I'd been feeling a little gipped after parades & changes, replays came to REDCAT this week, as if by missing the 1960's I'd missed having my mind blown by the first run of anything.

Wrong!

With or without all the rhetoric in the program notes (which I still refuse to read), "Once More, Again, One" is part is-this-art?, part Warhol happening, and all 2009. I'm not even totally sure when the program began, although it certainly picked up when David Kendall (not the VJ) spun a song out of sounds coming from the four dancers. The performance elements are just super. (Gush!) There are solos, duos, and Lucinda Childs-ish floor patterns, not to mention enough Prince to tide me over 'til next 1999. There's stripping down and zoning out and a creepy a capella Madonna cover! But I'd rather you attend this gem of a show than read what's in it. Heck, skip parades & changes, replays. You'll be learning more about postmodern art if you see it at Five Thirty Three. It's a grungy loft two meaningfully scary blocks away from the terrain of the Downtown Art Walk. Through the former factory windows you can see a "This Is My - OUR - Town" Dodgers billboard with good ol' Villaraigosa beaming. Make what you will of that.

I am a little wary of van der Kolk's Master's Degree. The institution says a lot about dance's recent history. To slug through tuition and academic red tape in order to make warehouse art... If you ask me, it's a paradox. It's undeniably networking-friendly, and preservative to say the least, but seems to counter by its very nature how we stick it to the man. (Can we anymore?)

But hey, I'd have had not a clue of the card-carryin' dancemaker's background if I hadn't asked before the show! So shame on me.

I am thoroughly impressed and relieved to know that my generation can escape sweepstakes and YouTube (awesome though the two may be).

Now please scrap your evening plans, scrap what you learned about what dance should be, and see this performance.