Review: Karen Sherman’s “Soft Goods” at CAP UCLA
Though primarily situated in the dance world, Karen Sherman's interdisciplinary work resists orthodoxy and is known for its inventiveness, wit and nuanced complexity. Her newest piece, Soft Goods, an examination of the lives lived backstage, illuminates the lonesomeness of theaters, the spectral beauty of a lighting focus, the choreography of labor, the labor of dance and the human hand behind stage art. Created in collaboration with an ensemble of stage technicians and dancers, and structured as a live load-in and technical rehearsal for a performance that never happens, Soft Goods is a meditation on work, life, loss and occupational self-obliteration.
As the Freud Playhouse lost its moorings and ran amok in the final harrowing minutes of choreographer Karen Sherman’s “Soft Goods,” presented Saturday night at UCLA’s Center for the Art of Performance, I’d be hard pressed to believe that the audience, too, did not become untethered.An out-of-control fog machine spewed smoke from stage to seats; music screeched at top volume; and rock-concert lights blinded viewers’ eyes.
Was anyone in the room not feeling powerless and scared? Ruminating on America’s most recent massacre in Las Vegas, I certainly was. I had to close my eyes and try to stay calm.
In her affectionate homage to a life in the theater, Sherman, a Minneapolis-based choreographer, staged an open-arena pageant that did more than “tear down the fourth wall.”
She pulverized it. She doubled down on its destruction. Scrims, cords, wires, plugs and lighting poles and bars, gels, gizmos and other theatrical apparatus littered the stage and played starring roles. In this backstage drama of the post-post universe, a guy with a Moses-length beard obsessed by his next meal is the funny man. A dance troupe faces off with a theater’s tech crew. Put the other way around, a bunch of nerdy tech guys endure a visit by a contemporary dance company. (“Are those the costumes?” one guy asks in disbelief.) Everyone gets exposed for their dumbness, pretension … and love of what they do.
Ninety minutes of “Soft Goods” passes quickly. We listen in as the techies yammer on their headsets about equipment like wizards; then they get to what they really care about: pizza and beer. We watch as dancers rehearse soporific dance phrases code-named “the tree,” “the pull,” “the turn.” They are the choreographer’s robots, forever seeking their ‘cue.’— Debra Levine, Oct. 8, 2017
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