Fresno State’s Contemporary Dance Ensemble (CDE) closed out their week of performances this past Saturday. The dance group, run by artistic director Kenneth Balint, left me with so much, but one word stayed pulsing through my brain and my heart: Human.
The show was broken down into six repertory-length pieces. Different titles, different numbers of dancers, different storylines, but to me and my interpretation, they all pointed back to that same central word. Human.
These breakdowns of each piece in the show are solely based on how I personally received each work, without the input of any choreographers or dancers and without knowing the initial backstory behind everything that was created.
Make It Dark
This piece started off the entire performance, with very warm-toned lights and costumes that represented everyday attire.
The dancing seemed relational and based on community. It started warm and happy, but didn’t take long before it took a turn. Violence started to come in, and I felt aggression and darkness. The lights got darker, but the costumes didn’t change.
To me, this was intentional. Life is so good, until it’s not, right? But regardless of our trials or our triumphs, one thing about life is it will go on.
The simple fact of the dancers staying in their “everyday wear,” both in the warmth and in the darkness, showed me that it’s real to go through the ups and downs of life.
It’s real to be okay and to be not okay. It’s real to face challenges in life that sometimes you might not make it out of. But the community cannot be ignored.
When the dancers were moving, it was like they were so alone yet so together. They didn’t necessarily always interact directly, but they couldn’t ignore the presence of each other. What does that sound like? An everyday walk of life.
Human(e) Cargo
This one was deep. It was actually choreographed by a student choreographer, Juana Cardenas, who was also one of the dancers.
The piece touched on the current state of society regarding immigration in our country. A section of the piece was danced to poetry, “Stone,” written and narrated by Aideed Medina. There was a lot of symbolism in the piece, especially in the portion danced to the poem.
Central ideas of the piece were division, detainment, inequality and violence. The symbolism of hands being chained behind their backs, but finally being broken at the end, touched a lot of people in the audience.
It was powerful to see such an emotional and heavy topic being performed with such eloquence and ease, and not emotional ease, but physical ease. It was like the moves were second nature. They weren’t forcing emotion; they were showing it.
Regardless of what side you stand with, violence is never okay. Forgetting that at the end of the day, we are all humans created one and the same, is not okay. The dancers absolutely conveyed this.
I want to include that the music cut out on them mid-dance, following a few minor music issues we heard from the audience.
What did they do? Kept going, of course, solely to the sounds of each other’s breath and their connection. It was really beautiful, actually. As a dancer myself who has experienced these things before, I know how stressful this was for them, but they handled it like pros.
Face of Despair
From my understanding, this piece was the central theme of last year’s CDE show and was brought back for this year’s show.
The lighting, music and emotions of all the dancers showed exactly what the title describes: Despair. This was a collective group of people trying to make it through life’s darkest moments.
I really enjoyed seeing the moments of breathing as one, and the moments of breathing separately, kind of a “to each their own” type of feeling.
One of the dancers took a moment on stage and audibly began to speak while on her knees on the floor. One of the things she said was, “If we must die, let it not be like hogs.” Again, this relates back to the concept of humanity and what it means to treat others as humans.
It seems some have lost the plot.
Finger in Your Eye!
For this year’s show, this piece was what it was all centered around.
To me, this resembled the idea of dimming someone’s light or sticking your finger in someone else’s eye.
Phoebe Rex, the main performer in this piece, was radiating immense joy, and this seemed to agitate everyone around her. She was just Phoebe who works at In-N-Out, which totally double points for. They used her voice over the music track to say “Hi, I’m Phoebe, and I work at In-N-Out” as she waved hello to the audience. A simple touch, but intentional. She’s just a girl!
As she walked around, smiling ear to ear and as happy as can be, and attempted to connect with her fellow dancers on stage, they remained glum and showed annoyance to her.
However, she stayed dancing to her own beat and eventually ended up being carried around as she waved joyfully to the audience, which I thought was really funny.
The moral of the story was that the more you allow the people around you to affect you and your attitude, the more displeased you’ll be. Phoebe didn’t. Be like Phoebe.
Freedom Ain’t Free
This was hands down my favorite piece of the whole show. I feel like most dancers will relate to me when I say this. When you watch a certain piece or even a specific movement, you make that stank face that literally means “dang, that was fire.”
This dance brought out my stank face a lot, and if you don’t know what that means, just trust me. It was fire. It was raw and authentic, choreographed by guest choreographer Waeli Wang.
It was the epitome of what it means to carry each other’s burdens and weight. There were moments of the dancers actually leaning on each other, unable to walk without the help of their peers.
The song “A Change is Gonna Come” by Charles Yang said, “Brother, help me please.” The dancers’ movements showed being each other’s strength in times of weakness, being each other’s strength when they felt like they had none left.
There was so much breath in this piece, but I have to highlight one dancer, Jason Pak; a talented performer whose breath I could literally hear from the audience.
A lot of moments were different sections of dancers doing different things at the same time. And as much as those moments were powerful, when everyone came together doing the same thing in unison, whew.
Another side note: I have to know where the costume designer got those jeans because I wanted all of them.
4CB
Talk about a piece that radiated joy!
It was all about life’s precious moments, the importance of finding joy, love and connection. But again, it was real.
Everyone kind of played different characters of life. From a cowgirl and inflatable horse costumes, to sailors running after a showgirl, to a folkloric dancer, to business men and women, it covered all the grounds.
After a collection of upbeat songs, the show ended with confetti and the dancers just freely moving around on stage, connecting with each other and truly having fun.
At the end of the day, no matter what type of dancer they were, what their strong suits were or what their backstory is, they were just humans having fun together.
