Yoshiko Chuma’s Shockwave Delay

Shockwave Delay, a two and a half hour “unscripted docudrama” of twenty overlapping chapters performed by a rotating cast of musicians, actors, and dancers, is like one of those kinetic sculptures where a ball travels through a complex course of loops, turns, triggers, and traps that goes on and on until you’re sure, yes, this section is the home stretch. But no, it’s not the end. There is yet another twist, more amazing than the last. At the center of all the Shockwave action is Yoshiko Chuma, founder of the School of Hard Knocks, dressed in painters’ whites, constantly witnessing, directing traffic, sometimes getting in the way.

Though the work marks more than forty years of multi-disciplinary collaborative productions, Chuma doesn’t call it a retrospective. A brand-new work, the show references past productions in its themes of human-caused destruction, oppression, and folly. Certain iconic props are resurrected: among them, a larger-than-life metal cube designed by Ralph Lee that dancers walk in and out of as they attempt to balance the cube onto one precarious corner, and a platinum blonde wig with a thick shelf of bangs once worn by Chuma, now sported by several of the current cast as if she has handed them the future.

Shockwave Delay gives the impression of a work in progress, beginning in the lobby where actors Kate Valk (of Wooster Group) and Jim Fletcher (of New York City Players) rehearse their monologues aloud, reading off iPads amidst audience members waiting for the doors to open. When master of ceremonies Nicky Paraiso makes opening remarks, Chuma repeatedly interrupts as if to inform him about some last-minute change. She whispers in his ear and we hear only Paraiso’s side of their conversation: “Yoshiko wants you to know … You want me to say that aloud? We want to acknowledge the land but we aren’t doing that today. Why not? Maybe we can talk after the show.” He goes on to read from a New York Times article because this day is the thirty-fourth anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre, signaling to anyone unacquainted with Chuma the political nature of what we’re about to see.

Chuma, as performer, has been associated with the NYC post-modern dance scene, yet her company, School of Hard Knocks, is devoted to something more. Program notes describe its productions as “thought-provoking work that is neither dance nor theater nor film nor any other predetermined category.” That’s Chuma’s superpower—creating an experience as fresh and bright as if the multi-colored innards of a kaleidoscope have been spilled across the floor. The cast becomes mesmerized by the possibilities as they sweep up the magical mess.

As a dancer, Chuma’s movement style strikes me as part martial art, part bull in a china shop. She slices the space with her energy. The dancers who join her in Shockwave Delay share her abstract aesthetic, though they each generate their own expression. In simultaneous solos they coolly investigate the multitude of ways one can manipulate their bodies. From my seat, I had a particularly good view of the coltish Ursula Eagly tossing and folding her angular limbs as if effortless.

When silhouetted against the light of three featured films, the dancers become marionettes dwarfed by oversized images projected on the rear wall: explosion of the Manhattan Project’s atomic bomb, and raging wildfires that eventually burn down to smoldering embers. The centerpiece of Shockwave is the wonderful 1980 “The School of Hard Knocks: Adventure in Moving” by Chuma and Jacob Burckhardt with music by Alvin Curran. It features Chuma and John Nesci loading parts of a table into and atop a station wagon, and the journey that ensues.

Meanwhile, live from the wings, music by Jason Kao Hwang on strings and Christopher McIntyre on horns provides a connective thread for the many disparate activities of the show. In a study of contrasts, Dane Terry plays a delicate piano solo while the bomb’s mushroom cloud looms behind him. An air raid signal blasts insistently while Fletcher delivers a monologue about a carnival confidence game involving wooden milk bottles. Oblivious to the ear-splitting siren, a performer stacks a multitude of wooden bottles, knocks them down, restacks. Later, Terry is again at the keyboard when a catlike Chuma attempts to hijack his performance by standing on the piano bench, reaching over and under his arms while he plays on, never missing a note.

A few of the many visual effects worth noting: An ocean wave created by a dancer diving between two layers of gigantic tarps; a third tarp, white, becomes a puffy cloud that floats midair; large red, blue, and green plastic bags, held overhead by the dancers like balloons, return later as a camp of little glowing tents lit by flashlight from inside; a white picket fence the performers unspool splits the stage with a giant X in a statement about property ownership.

An awards ceremony hosted by Chuma interrupts the performance, with Fletcher announcing a list of twenty-three notable artists associated with School of Hard Knocks over the years. Similarly, a graduation ceremony brilliantly serves to introduce each of the Shockwave performers.

At the end of “Adventure in Moving,” we’re left with the image of the fractured tabletop floating out to sea, a single leg poking up like a periscope, while the sterling voiced Marisa Tornello delivers an acapella version of “Que Será, Será.” What will be, will be. Perhaps a fitting statement on which to end? But, no, like the kinesthetic sculpture, the fascinating Shockwave continues on.