Unmasked

 Unmasked

Beneath the Veil, A Cirque Experience

Dixon Place, NYC
Aug, 26, 2021 (Closed)
Producer/Director: Fran Sperling

Cast:Gillian Barkins (Aerial silks), Malin Bergman (Aerial silks), Makenzi Cooley (Aerial hoop), Linda Huang (Dance Trapeze), Ellie Klein (Contortion artist), Danie Kohn and Rob Williams (Acrobats/ Cyr Wheel), Eliana Wenick (Aerial hoops), Toby Russell Medlyn (Spinning Pole), Sara Odze (Aerial silks), Olga Puntus (Aerial Silks), Bridget Dahl (Aerial hammock) & Susana Morehouse (Hair hang act)

Suspended Animation.
Noun:
“the temporary cessation of most vital functions without death, as in a dormant seed or a hibernating animal. -Oxford Languages

  For the past year and a half or more, much of the global human population has experienced something akin to suspended animation. We have to varying degrees had to slow, STOP, suspend what had become our routine normal activities. We have had to remain in isolation, in our homes, work and communication carried on remote from one another in an atmosphere of perpetual fear of death, only kept from that by our suspended activities and isolation. There is no need here to go into more detail on this fact. We all know it and all have experienced it while hearing of the death count even if we have, so far, been able to avoid death or the death of someone personally dear to us.
  It’s not over. We may have been teased here in New York City by an “All Clear” a “Homecoming New York” that appears to be truncated into “But wait” the danger not gone, and perhaps evolved into something even more infectious.

  In this atmosphere the one night performance Unmasked was more than a show, it was a catharsis, a pantomime of our suspended animation. Performers in the air grasp tightly to the threads of existence, a slippage, an error could result in serious injury or even death. (“You could break your neck!” Yes, thanks mom.) Survival is entirely dependent on human physical strength and acquired skill as the performers pull themselves up on yards of silk. They are pulling themselves off the floor, the base, to ten or more feet into the air. This becomes a metaphor of our very existence, in essence, emerging from the grounded safety of the womb, the floor, the pandemic isolation, the home, and climbing out into the risky proposition of LIFE. We always know it is temporary, this individual elevation into LIFE. The floor, the ground is always there awaiting our return. It is only our will and our strength that keeps us above, ALIVE.

  The Unmasked performers artfully illustrate what we do once we are off the ground. We dance in the air of our tender lives. The silk performers wrap themselves in the threads of existence and show us the beauty, strength and power of human life. All above the hard unyielding floor, without a net. As we do in life, they pose, they suspend themselves wrapped in the secure, yet unstable, silk of life to take a momentary horizontal relaxed position, then shift, rearrange and, with skillfully controlled slippage, yoyo unraveling, suddenly plummet several feet down, but catch themselves, their strength and will, saving them to climb and dance, show us their beauty and grace once again.

  With all this the viewer is deeply touched, without effort of thought/speech, shown the dance of individual life, not told about it through the step-away medium of spoken language, but seeing, witnessing close-up our fellow strong by fragile humans doing the dance of life.

  This type of performance can only really be felt in a live presentation. We see something here that is as old as human existence. Does the art of this go back to our hunter-gatherer roots where a member of the tribe says, “Hey! Watch THIS!”? Out of this primal background it is best appreciated live and direct. Of course we have all seen it pulled away from us, taken from us transformed and exploited over time into a SHOW, evolving with showbiz into the melodrama of the “death defying” drumroll accompanied spectacle. That type of exhibition takes it from us and then sells it back, turning it into a product, by separating it from us. It becomes something over there, a world elite grandiose and remote that can be witnessed devoid of much personal feeling.

  Unmasked gave it back to us in perhaps the only way we can still have it, in the close-up reality of an intimate theaterial setting. 
Human beauty is experienced directly beyond the capabilities of other media and The Greatest Show on Bigtop TV. We all view TV, cinema, moving images with side-eye suspicion. We know it's not real, but trick and special effect laden.
The live presentation of Unmasked brings it all back home where it is best and most deeply experienced.

Unmasked producer/director Fran Sperling beautifully packaged this evening of performances. Each act was introduced with a brief personal story that references the Covid pandemic and how the individual has coped with it. It’s all rather, matter of fact, just what went on. No need or attempt at hyperbole  This was a brilliant concept that heightened what we witnessed, the pantomime performance that focuses on the beauty of the dance of life without exploiting the Death Defying elements that we don’t need to be told are always there.

Unmasked was a deeply moving performance by skilled, powerful, hardworking performers. Simply a once in a lifetime experience, a moment, climbing out from change and floating away with it.  

- Steve Carter (Aug 2021)