AGORA
by HQ
What do you call normal looking without having to say normal?
It's critical in that a female dancer sat next to me while we
were waiting for "Agora" to start. She wasn't beautiful
yet she was no where near ugly. She didn't look overbearing yet
she wasn't outstanding. She was a pretty person although I wouldn't
have given her my number. I knew she was part of the dance troupe
because she had been doing her stretches. The production was planned
only for the McCarren Park pool. And fo rilly tho this dance number
would've been worthless if it weren't in a place of this magnitude.
She asked me what time it was. It was past 9pm on opening night
and I figured she was growing ansy since the place had been packed
out. We all sat around the edge of the pool waiting. It was chaos
when it did start.
For anyone who's never heard of the McCarren Pool it was sort
of a local mystery. It sits in Williamsburg and has always been,
until a month or two ago, abandoned since back in it's heyday
years ago. It became dilapidated and stripped of it's beauty.
People had passed on stories of irate homeless people defending
their homes and fuck-faces chasing people out. It was more or
less forbidden. I knew it was a safe-haven for graffiti because
some of the better known bombers have graced the walls.
The production team placed lights strategically which gave a
run-down ticket booth the gift of character, highlighted chipped
painted pool bottoms, and most importantly gave life to this weird
motherfucking production.
I'm not into dance. I've watched So You think You can Dance?
I've concluded that it was pretty gay for me to continue watching.
To sum up, this was exactly what $25 gave me which was a good
time for an hour in a really interesting venue to watch people
interpret the root of the productions' name Agoraphobia or fear
of wide open spaces. Never mind that I hit up that haze. I was
looking to be wowed and I was. I was wooed by the weird dancers
doing extra weird things and for the out of place guy watching
TV or for the people having sex or for the performer/audience
interaction that brings the performance to mere inches from your
face.
Agora reminded me of a part in the production "Via Via De
La Guarda" when they get to mingle and rape people in the
audience. It's an experience to be thrown to the floor and have
to be derobed to your skivvies by some actress who is half naked
and wet…..They didn't do that here but they do get in your
face. That girl doing the stretches did get half naked at about
half way through the play.
According to the producers' website "Agora will produce
the illusion of travel through the different layers of visceral
urban experiences and explore the phenomenon of agoraphobia as
a social and physical reaction to urban architecture."
Fuck…I don't know if that shit did for me what it was supposed
to but I saw some definite booty. And I guess that's all that
really matters.
http://www.sensproduction.org/current/agora.php
