𝕓𝕒𝕣𝕖, 𝕨𝕚𝕥𝕟𝕖𝕤𝕤. 2023 (Trailer)
Bill Nguyen — Review of bare, witness. (Excerpt)
December 4, 2023
In addition to dance, there is song, and soliloquy, and poetry, and painting. Even the dancing refuses singularity, instead drawing from hip-hop and African, tap and house. At one point, Kidd goes behind the translucent scrim and improvises a series of phrases that are filmed and replayed as projections on the scrim itself, overlapping until there is no telling which phrase came when. Meanwhile, a prerecording of Kidd’s voice intones, “For in my life’s grand design, my identities intertwine. I find the beauty in blending all that’s inside.” Interdisciplinary art often comes across academic and perfunctory, like an idea that is far more interesting than its execution. By contrast, there is something invigorating about how Kidd integrates his chosen forms. In fact, it might be that they seem not chosen but born of necessity—of the sense that he has no choice at all, no other way of expressing what he must say.
One thrilling achievement is that Kidd includes the audience in his journey. This happens quite literally at the end, when he invites the theatergoers to rise and “walk with me” out to the hall, where he bids them farewell. But the inclusion is even more impressive in intimate moments. Like the overlapping phrases, the poignant climax of Kidd’s performance unfolds behind the scrim. When he was eleven years old, he lost his father; today, at forty-four, he has two sons. “Do my boys see my dad in me?” he asks. He is tap-dancing frantically, without direction, as a camera films from overhead and projects the image on to the scrim. We see his sweat; we hear his panting. His prerecorded voice cuts in again: “I think I’ll leave my boys with a tattered script to read. I’ll write of the ways my dad loved me.” More tapping. “He told me.” Streaks of black paint on the canvas underfoot. “I am remembering written words by rote.” When Kidd finishes, he looks up at the camera, which means he is looking at us. His look conveys—what? Not an answer to any of the questions he has posed, or even the outline of a solution. His eyes are merely his eyes: tired, desperate, and free. They tell us how it feels to be straddling, to be caught. To be bare as others witness.
🎥 Joshua Booth
🎵Ryan Phelan