The theater lights dim. The audience is silenced with anticipation. Two disembodied pupils appear on the projection screen. They scan right, then left. Up, then down. The eyes with no face look at you, then they look away from you. Gradually a tinny beeping, heart monitor-like noise begins to emanate from the speakers and the dancers of Sola's "Drought and Rain, Vol. 2" assume position.
Backs to the audience, the dancers stand there rigidly, and then very slowly, at first even imperceptibly, they begin to move. They pace mechanically across the stage -- to and fro, back and forth. Never touching, as if each dancer is in his or her own sphere of reality, unconscious or unaware of the others.
Apparently in the male dancers' universe, however, there is no dress code. They are oddly attired in whatever clothing they had either woken up in or decided to throw on right before the performance. The women dancers, on the other hand, are all somberly dressed in black from head to toe.
Amid the pacing and glassy, distant eyes of the dancers, what I've dubbed the "Vietnamese Mafia" enter the stage. They are all dressed in black with hair slicked back and outfits complete with gangster, "no funny business" sunglasses. Turns out they are actually "the orchestra," or rather, the musical accompaniment to Sola's ballet. From time to time they beat their drums angrily or scratch them furiously so that a "swishy-swashy" sound is heard throughout the theater.
After the dancers pace about for what seems to be an immeasurable amount of time, things start to get truly wild. The women dancers begin to resemble the creepy girl from "The Ring," with long black hair completely masking their faces, obscuring any facial expression they might be making. The dancers on a whole begin to convulse wildly in response to the pounding of the drums. The stage floods with red light, and an onslaught or blood bath of frenzied human movement ensues. There's machete-girl wildly thrashing about, and strangulation-boy gasping for air. All the dancers act as if their bodies are riddled with bullet holes, falling about the place, shaking uncontrollably, violently lost in the motion of distress -- like picture mimes on crack.
At this point, the woman with the Vietnamese Mafia begins to wail and the dancers pick up stage props that consist of photographs of people affected by aspects of war.
The dancers then proceed to parade about the stage with logo items and posh bags, in a very "Material Girl" kind of way. The projection screen that had previously displayed the eerie, detached eyes, is now scrolling the message: "Don't go away tonight when the moon crosses the row of trees, don't go away tonight too long is the night."
The scrolling marquee is followed by more violent ululating and frenetic dancing, with an overall angry, crazed, inexplicable kind of atmosphere emerging beneath the flickering lights.
Obviously Sola has been affected by war; she is no stranger to its isolation or its destruction. If anything, her choreography shows her disillusionment with war, affirming her personal belief that ,"war's only purpose is to destroy life." Subscribing to the notion that the true horrors of war are indescribable and incomprehensible, Sola aks her audience to "remember people we do not know and places and times in which we ourselves have never lived."
Gradually, the unceasing agitation of the dancers subsides and the lighting turns from blood red to a soothing blue. The dancers move in synchronized motions -- there is no longer the wall of separation between each dancer. They proceed to do a combination of "praying mantis" and "sitting philosopher" yoga poses, and even briefly don Buddha masks as they reach various states of enlightenment. In the hazy blue light dancers fall, simulating death. There is mourning, weeping and inexpressible hurt and emotion pouring forth from the other dancers. There is the wiping of one dancer's face, giving him an almost Christ-like status. The earlier discord has been replaced by empathy and sympathy.
As the dance of war and destruction draws to a close, a myriad of names fill the projection screen and the dancers begin to chant various names of different nationalities, giving Sola's production a more global or universal appeal. In her own crazy and avant-garde way, Sola communicates the evils of war, its incomprehensibility, and the raw, frenetic energy that humans possess.
If Stanley Kubrick was still around, I'd say he better watch out; if Sola ever hits the big screen we're all guaranteed one wild, "Yellow Submarine" ride into a distorted land of unexplainable emotions and just plain weirdness.
