About halfway through the multi-movement contemporary dance work "One Pie at a Time," dancer and co-collaborator Erin Kracht comes to terms with her own body.
Set to music by Philip Glass (arranged and performed by Nicolas Horvath), Kracht's choreography appears to discover, move by move and touch by touch, a new understanding of what it means to have a body. Like an awakening, reckoning and grounding — the opposite of dysmorphia. As she ends the movement, she slowly walks across the front of the stage, making fiery, vulnerable eye contact with the audience.
"One Pie at a Time" at San Diego International Fringe Festival:
- 9 p.m. Wednesday, May 20
- 10:30 p.m. Thursday, May 22
- 11:30 a.m. Sunday, May 25
Light Box Theater, 2590 Truxtun Rd., Liberty Station
Festival info at sdfringe.org
Kracht and co-creator Tina Carreras assembled a cast of dancers to collaborate on "One Pie at a Time," part of San Diego International Fringe Festival. The world premiere is a study on the unrealistic expectations placed on women, like beauty standards, career accomplishments, caregiving and all-around perfection. As a roughly 50-minute dance work, it toes the line between theater, dance and group therapy (with a creative use of a pre-show stretching session-meets-support group).
Dance is not entirely unheard of at Fringe, but it's always refreshing to see contemporary dance in experimental theater and performance festivals — like Fringe.
Through a roughly 13-act piece, Carreras' character serves as something of a story arc as we watch her evolve from childhood through fragmented snapshots of the realities of a patriarchal society. Music ranges from extremely familiar (like a pared-down rendition of "Just a Girl" or Cake's "Short Skirt/Long Jacket") to whimsical vintage selections like Lesley Gore and Mildred Bailey.
During a duet between Carreras and Lisa Strickland, the song "Short Skirt/Long Jacket" clearly and absurdly lists the layers of expectations placed upon women in a patriarchal society. The rock song's relentless list of traits for this perfect woman is rendered by the dancers as both impossible and a little futile.
Humor and seemingly organic, improvised connection between the dancers are peppered throughout the show. But in one gorgeously constructed moment, all but one of the dancers form a sort of human sculpture, splayed on the floor and grasping at each other. Each stands and names a particular role or identity as an offering.
And finally, the lone dancer speaks.
Dancer Tem Albright offers a powerful throughline: Mysteriously perched at a vanity for the majority of the performance, Albright's voice is only heard when they add to the list of identities, calling out trans erasure.
Albright then dances to "Any Other Way" by pioneering 1960s trans jazz great Jackie Shane. And in a brief monologue, Albright touches on the history of exclusion and violence toward nonbinary and trans individuals in the U.S. — and acknowledges that trans stories are often omitted from shows that celebrate or explore womanhood — "shows like this."
Carreras said that like each character, Albright's role blossomed as the show developed. "Because it was a collaborative experience, they got to bring that bit to it. We couldn't have imagined something better. Every single dancer, there was intention behind what was happening — their part, their role, every single movement, every sound," Carreras said.
An actual pie had been a somewhat curious, if silly, motif throughout the performance. But as the dancers rally around Albright, they finally, ravenously and messily inhale that pie together — a glorious and unselfconscious thing to witness.
