Editor’s note: Carson Leys, a dancer and student at Salt Lake Arts Academy, has taken a sabbatical for her seventh grade year to live in Spain with her family. She sent home an email with this delightfully descriptive review of a performance by Baldin Bada Dance. Special Thanks to Karin Fenn, her teacher.
First, to set the stage. Five rows of chairs set in a messy semi-circle on the slick cobblestone of the Plaza de Brisco. The whole town seems to be seated on these chairs, or else on benches, spindly-legged cafe stools, or on the smooth stones themselves. Little kids from San Juan de la Peña Primary school bounce balls off each other or the three glass walls of the bus station, toddlers run rampant through the flower beds, and middle-aged men and women scroll through the photos on their phones, waiting for the show to start. The sun sinks behind the cityscape, and the church bells announce that the time is seven oclock.
No curtain rises, but it is as obvious as the house lights going dark when the dancers are ready to begin. On the stage is one blank canvas, two dancers, and around fifty seemingly-empty five gallon buckets. A woman pops out from behind the canvas, her dark hair tied in a Star Wars-style ponytail, with smudges of different colored paint on her face and fake-denim romper. Her face lights theatrically when she sees the audience, and a playful grin spreads rapidly across her features. She gestures excitedly, and a man walks out from the other side of the canvas. He walks purposefully across the stage and sits down at a keyboard disguised under more buckets of paint. He has a broad face, not particularly memorable, with light brown hair and beard. He also has a slight potbelly, edging over the waist of his pants, but confined inside his suspenders.
A beat echoes from some hidden speaker, and he begins to pick a melody. Then his partner starts to dance. I won’t describe the entire piece, for I doubt you or I would have enough patience for that, but the time flies in a swirl of paint, rhythm, and random but highly enjoyable gymnastics tricks on top of paint buckets. At the end, after all heads are full of memories of a wonderful performance and the once-blank canvas is covered in with blend of colored paint, the dancers face the audience for their bows.
Now, all dance concerts have messages the dancers intend for the audience to understand. Whether they are as obvious as the sun in the sky or hidden under layers of emotional struggle and depressing piano solos, they’re there. And this one, even though it was in a language I only half-understand, was my favorite of all of them. Some of the details may have gotten lost in translation, but the gist of it is the same.
“All of our children hold a powerful tool in their hands. It may be a paint brush, a pencil, or even a fat orange crayon, but they have the power to create. We must allow them to paint the reality they want, and make their own way in the world.” Okay, it may not have been quite that cheesy, but you get the idea.
This is the review part. When I sat down to watch this performance, I was not planning on writing a review. I didn’t even want to go. And yet here I am, less than two hours later, writing a review for a class that I’m not even a part of this year.
The thing that struck me most about this piece was how sound was almost, if not equally, important as the movement. Of course I’m not talking about the music, although it was quite impressive too. The man expertly handled three different instruments, piano, accordion, and a loop machine, sometimes two at a time. But what I found really interesting were the ways they used their movement to create sound, or how they allowed their dancing to be wholly influenced by the music.
For one captivating sequence, there was no music, and the only sound was the rhythm created by the empty paint buckets. The dancers would lift them, clap them, stack them, and slam them on the ground, each time creating a faster and more complicated beat. There was also a really fun section where the woman was dancing on a ladder, moving up, down, and sideways depending on the notes of the keyboard.
Even after all that, my favorite part would have to involve the paint. At this point in the performance, everyone had seen maybe half the piece, filled with paint buckets but no paint. You knew it had to come in at some point or other. As the woman picks up a wide brush and a paint roller, her partner exchanges his keyboard for a large metallic accordion.
This part was a lot like other dance concerts I’ve been too, dancers moving in a way directly influenced by the music, only a lot more fun for any kid because paint was involved. She jumps, slashes, and slides across the canvas, until it is covered in a collage of blue and white shapes. It is only at the very end you realize what she’s painted. A self portrait, in profile, shouting the words “Baldin Bada”. This is the name of the piece, in Basque, and means, by direct translation, “if any”.
