This is what I understand about punk. It is really fast and not particularly melodious, sustained by a propulsive beat. It’s guitar, bass, and drums. It happens at night, in basement clubs, and it’s sweaty and exhilarating. It has to be loud. It smokes and drinks. Its energy is usually spastic and driving, although it’s capable of occasional delirious loopiness. It’s raw and dirty and frequently obnoxious, but it’s never phony. It resists; it shouts at something—maybe at pop.
This is how Brute Force—choreographer Abby Zbikowski’s new dance, presented as part of OSU’s Dance Downtown at the Capitol Theatre over the weekend—overlaps punk. Well, she uses music by bands like Bad Brains and Misfits, but that’s not really what I’m getting at. The young women who comprise its cast are relentless, doggedly pushing against I don’t know what. They are loud; they stomp in rhythm and emit deep, guttural “ha!”s. They leap heavily in their sneakers and hurl punches. They are all still, poised in profile in a shallow lunge, and together they advance a single stride with such projectile, fireball force that their bodies are like bows disgorging arrows. Thwmppp. Again: Thwmppp. It goes on; it’s a trial, an endurance, a test, an exhaustion. There is a point at which they’ve pushed and pounded so long that, panting, they transcend the realm of push and pound entirely. Little ditties follow; the dancers take off their shirts (down, boy; they’re wearing sports bras) and twirl them like a strip-tease gone haywire. They twirl so long that the twirling shirts create their own force fields.
And this is how Brute Force, at the same time, overlaps with life. When I expect a dancer to repeat a complicated lift, she drops onto the back of another dancer who is crawling away on her hands and knees. Okay, that exact thing doesn’t happen much in regular life, but such an unexpected turn of events does, when you find that which was predictable is already moving off in an unforeseen direction. A line of dancers slides through and between another line, and in so doing, causes that line to morph into something else. Or a dancer begins to do something different from the others, and that becomes a catalyst for change; the group and its parts evolve. And you know how kids play rough, rolling together and trying to pull the other one down—or, better still, taking on some willing and resilient adult? Do you remember that feeling, expelling maximum force from your body and testing the world’s resistance to it? Somehow, this dance is like that.
This is a review of Abby Zbikowski’s dance Brute Force, which was performed Nov 22-23, 2013. Insofar as a review serves as a recommendation or buyer’s guide, this one is only moderately helpful; Brute Force only ran that weekend. It’s over, but do watch for her name and the opportunity to see this, or any other, work of hers.
