Depth of the mind reveals itself in drama production at the Redfern Arts Center
Eric Jedd
Equinox Staff
People generally say the brain works in mysterious ways. Wednesday night at the Redfern Arts Center, the Everett Dance Theatre Company displayed an interpretation of how the human brain functions. The theme-based dance company visited Keene State College’s art center Wednesday, March 28, and performed its piece, Brain Storm.
The Everett Company’s program described how they got together, stating, “Everett is a cross-disciplinary, cross-generational, and cross-cultural ensemble of dance and theater artists creating, performing, teaching and engaging a diverse community through the arts.” The Company was founded in 1986 and gained national recognition for its concert works. In addition to KSC students, students from Franklin Pierce University also attended to gain experience in the live theatre techniques.
A faculty member of FPU stated, “We are here to see Brain Storm with the ‘Experiencing the Arts’ classes at Franklin Pierce. All of those classes, plus a number of dance classes, have come to see the performance.”
When the show started, the stage opened with cloth draped over an undefinable structure. When the lights dimmed a light appeared underneath the cloth, moving back, forth, and all around. Narration took over the speakers, and lights zoomed in and out, revealing shadows corresponding to the narration. Then, through projectors, images took their places on the draped cloth depicting scenes from movies, scenes of nature, and other images. This mixture of physical motion, lighting, music, and narration continued throughout the presentation.
Other stages of the performance included masked performers peeking in and out from behind draped and mobile scaffolding, dancing around, acting out scenarios, and depicting feelings and happenings of thoughts inside the brain.
The dance troupe continued its performance, with performers taking the place of projected faces. The people projected onto the dancers told stories of their mental illnesses, giving details of what it is like to not remember events in their lives, or hearing voices in their heads.
One part of the performance even featured one of the dancers staring up at his projection, informing him that he couldn’t run away from himself. The performer tried to ignore him and get away but couldn’t and started dancing in sync with the projection. More still, the performers took to the stage using the scaffolding to move, dance, set up scenes, and express their art.
The final section of the performance had the dancers spinning the scaffolding around, posing and switching back and forth between the structures. Among the performers and people behind the show that stayed to talk, KSC’s Director of the Counseling Center, Brian Quigley, said, “It was very fulfilling and satisfying to view abnormalities of the brain.”
Co-Director of Brain Storm, Dorothy Jungels, commented about the production of the performance piece. “We decided we wanted to do something about the brain. I was very interested that scientists were studying emotions,” she said.
She went on to say, “As performers, actors, movers, singers, dancers, we use emotions all the time and are interested in what they mean and how we can have the best life through our emotions.”
Jungels also stated that the company took this opportunity to do research on the brain by inviting scientists to “Brain Cafés.”
These cafés happened once a month, when different scientists that studied the brain would come in and teach the performers about certain topics. “We’d have accompanying neuroscientists on board,” Jungels said. “They would do the science of it, and we would do the story part, movement and dance, and video.”
Eventually more and more people started going to Brain Cafés, and started asking the company if they would tell the stories of their personal brain conditions.
“We had one person ask if we could do a dance of their ticks and twitches,” Jungels said. “Someone asked if we could do their story of schizophrenia, and another one was about a girl with locked-in syndrome, and her mother wanting us to tell her daughter’s story,” she said.
The members of this production used this information gathered over the span of a couple of years and interpreted it in their own artistic style.
Eric Jedd can be contacted at
ejedd@keene-equinox.com