Choreography and Concept by William Yong
DanceWorks present a Zata Omm Dance Project
At the Enwave Theatre
October 20-23, 2011

            Using Hindu legend, Buddhist scripture, and Western multi-media, William Yong poses a number of questions in his new seventy-minute dance piece about existential confusion, distraction, and temptation. Mara is the Hindu goddess of Death and is the embodiment of temptation. Yong finds her correlative in the manifold multi-media of our post-modern age, where social networking and high technology have become common features of a lifestyle that entraps those of us who can easily lose our way when faced with various forms of enticing distraction. In his program notes, Yong alludes to his reading of Buddhist scripture that set him musing about ethics, metaphysics, and spirituality, but too much of his musings are inchoate or half-formed; they pose questions in a very generalized way and, therefore, could hardly be relied on for answers. Not that art has a responsibility to provide answers, but the fact remains that too much of Yong’s piece is marred by fuzziness. The dancing of individual sequences is good—especially by the tall, sinuous Yong himself, who sometimes looks like a wraith—but somehow they do not knit themselves into a satisfying whole.

            I do not know why modern dancers fancy themselves philosophers. Contemplativeness or rumination is, more often than not, incompatible with dance, except when sharply articulated by movement or by accompanying text. In Mara, the changing formations, the pas de deux and trios, the ensemble huddles, and the general fascinations provided by Yong, Heather Berry-Macphail, Kate Franklin, Erika-Leigh Howard, and Nicholas Melymuk are somehow inadequate. Yong flirts dangerously with bathos when he has a dancer, bound with cords, call out to or for God, just as he gets nowhere at the moments when he goes off to one side to record his thin musings. Visually, there is ample that is alluring or satisfying in Elysha Poirier’s video design, Andrea Rocca’s music, Rebecca Picherack’s lighting, and the multiple headpieces, props, light wall designs, and cable costumes, but it is hard to see a real journey in all the movement, much less a path that we can either learn from or avoid while striving for meaningful insights.

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