November 30–December 7, 1995
critical mass|dance/performance

SCRAP Performance Group Philadelphia Arts Bank, Nov. 16-18.

Do the letters in SCRAP stand for something? I asked one of the company members about this at a post-opening party, and the answer was "no." But Billy Ehret, director of Philadelphia Alliance for Performance Alternatives (PAPA), which sponsored SCRAP at the Arts Bank, quickly interjected, "It's an attitude, not an acronym."

Couldn't have said it better myself. SCRAP is full of attitude — an attitude of intense spirit, blazing physicality, wild wit and curious creativity. This presentation marked the world premiere of the ensemble, whose principal members are Myra Bazell, Alya Howe, Katharine Livingston, Eric Schoefer and Darla Stanley. Independent choreographers all, they've worked in various local dance groups including Danceteller, Group Motion, Waves and Melanie Stewart Dance. With SCRAP — also the title of their debut collaboration piece — the quartet integrates their collective backgrounds to come up with an intriguing mix of mindsets that both clash and correspond.

In SCRAP (the dance), a performer first appearing as an angel is later seen as an S & M fiend. A chainsaw buzzes while small white feathers flutter from a washing machine hiked up on a wall. Soon thereafter a man emerges from the machine, climbs down a rope to get to the floor and starts a fire by rubbing sticks. A balloon man's happy-go-lucky bubble is burst by a cruel spiked sword-wielding crowd lurking in the shadows. In another scene, the same man dressed in drag gleefully hops in a Celtic sword dance.

Performers literally climb the walls. They dance on pedestals. Strapped into harnesses, they fly into the audience or hang precipitously off a side platform that juts above seated patrons. It's a Kafkaesque whirligig of non-sequitur sequences.

The five SCRAP members plus seven guest performers move about in an eerie dreamscape comprised of warriors, lovers, dancers, street gangs and lost souls, acting out scenes raw, taut, sensual and gritty. Through them we channel-surf through a surreal live-action naked city. Heightened physicality and an urban atmosphere is enhanced by a set design of main stage scaffolding and tall steel-pipe side wall grid. These and other physical features afford opportunities for multiple focal points of activity. A central soloist's action is often accompanied by others stealthily moving in cubicles of the scaffolding. In some cases, TV sets turned on but with blank screens invite substitute visual stimulation, or non-stimulation.

The piece is fragmented, and sometimes difficult to make sense of. But so it goes when dealing with the surreal — where truths are twisted, folded and questioned in fantastical free-associations. The few detractions are more than compensated for by SCRAP's savvy sense of dynamics — both in their expansive use of the Arts Bank space and also in their varied movement styles.

The evening opened with a piece entitled Trees (choreographed by Alya Howe). Bazell, Livingston and Trina Collins stand on blocks dressed in skirts of bark-like print. While a soundtrack infers changes in environmental conditions — dawn, sunshine and birds chirping, rain, wind — the trio manipulate their arms, torsos and faces to make vivid imagined reactions of tree spirits. This goes on till the sound of a buzzsaw is heard. Soon enough their expressive motions cease and the women's bodies turn stiff as logs. Certainly not as complex as the follow-up work of the evening, Trees nonetheless offered a captivating atmospheric scenario.
— Deni Kasrel