To the Brim

“I was excited to see To the Brim, a renamed reprise of Hance’s collaboration with composer Charles Halka which was first seen earlier this year at Dance Month’s Houston Choreographers X6. Seated on a side riser in the Spring Street Studios space, I was able to experience the piece from a perspective altogether different from watching it dead center in the Evelyn Rubenstein Jewish Community Center’s proscenium theater.

Halka’s music is still chilling in its pondering simplicity, almost eerie in its voyeurism, almost as if the music is observing the trio of Jacquelyne Jay Boe, Laura Gutierrez, and Ashley Horn at work. The space change, however, gave the dance a more immediate energy. In such close proximity to the long, curious shapes and the mysterious relationships between the dancers, the audience becomes a part of this internal struggle bubbling just under the brim of consciousness.”