In Your Face: Stillness and Frenzy, Brooklyn as Siberia

Walking along the deserted streets of Bushwick, the industrial neighborhood where Antonietta Vicario's ensemble performed hyperTHERMIA, created the proper alienated state of mind to watch her hypothetical "journey through Siberia." In Chez Bushwick's loft theater, five women lay motionless, inches from us—so close that we could intuit a deep breath or wiggling finger. This yogic reductiveness led into swift, violent phrases in which the dancers slammed their palms on the floor, or flipped one leg over using the other. Our proximity challenged but didn't break the dancers' focus in prolonged balances, their legs orbiting their bodies. After a brisk segment—all whipping limbs, heaving sighs, and avian shrieks—each woman retreated to her own introverted pattern: snow angel, fetal curl, or rolling up the rope that divided them from us. The dance was far more abstract than the title implies, but it took us on a diverting journey nonetheless.