The Brooklyn Rail

A phone on its last legs begs a group of girls waiting for an Uber to be charged. A hand model prepares for a big audition by strutting around their apartment, doing different hand positions. A realtor brushes off imaginary dirt from a chair (a performer holding a wall squat). Movers blankly carry around imaginary boxes, leaping from place to place and ignoring anyone talking to them. Lovers chase each other around.

One of them, in a gag shirt with muscles drawn on, says, “I lie all the time.” The other one, in a bikini and wet hair, responds, “Show me.” After a kiss, a gag shirt says, “You’re a terrible kisser” and both of them laugh.

In the beginning monologue of I DANCE ALL THE TIME, the piece’s creator Isa Spector walks clockwise around Pageant, an East Williamsburg performance space, touching each wall and repeating the phrase “limitless horizons and infinite possibilities.”

The audience is on the journey with Spector. As we head towards limitless horizons with infinite possibilities, every step we take ends up always shifting, fleeting, and ephemeral. Each task, whether it’s begging to be charged, auditioning, or brushing off dirt, while repeated in different contexts and situations, is short lived.

The overlying arc of I DANCE ALL THE TIME follows a hand model named Ashtin’s journey—prepping for and going to an audition and ultimately losing the role. But this arc is interrupted by a variety of surrealist scenes, creating a series of vignettes that capture all of these fleeting moments.

A monologue where Ashtin tries to remember a specific movie morphs into a joke about the short lifespan of artist-run spaces and then morphs again into a series of repeating gestures and movements. Dream sequences and movie references disrupt the audience’s journey, creating a continuously slippery quality that asks us to lend our trust to the piece and the horizon that it’s moving towards.

Relationships between the performers—embodied by Celine Abdallah, Aimee Grumbach, Bobbi Salvör Menuez, Iliana Penichet-Ramirez, Reed Rushes, Kate Williams, and Anna Thérèse Wittenberg—are in flux from moment to moment. Often a relationship changes completely with the addition of a new performer, moving from a group fighting to a West Side Story snap circle.

The phone dies, enters heaven, but still begs to be charged (the god asks if it is an Apple or Android). Ashtin arrives late to the audition to find out that they are just one hand model in a large lineup. The realtor asks the buyer to jump through a series of QR hoops in order to send the payment. The blank-faced movers refuse to respond to Ashtin, carrying boxes to and fro. When Ashtin leaves, they have a moment where they are on stage alone.

They look out at the audience.

They see the audience.

They look at each other.

They look at the audience.

One of them steps forward, and starts to speak.

But before any words can be uttered, they are interrupted. Spector comes out from the audience and assigns the movers new roles: assistants to help teach the audience a quick movement. In a second, the movers are relegated back to being nameless and invisible.

Similarly, during the audition sequence, a series of models take turns positioning their hands on top of human furniture that create podiums, couches, and openings.When it’s Ashtin’s turn, they are not only crushed by the furniture they’re posing with, but is subsequently told that they lost out on the role. A few sequences later, while watching a movie with their friends, they stumble upon what they were auditioning for: a commercial for a beer labeled “PAGEANT.” Who got the role? A creature made up of foam fingers.

The ad plays as Ashtin’s friends commiserate with them. And sitting in an audience full of creators and performers, I couldn’t help but think about the similarities to the current state of performance. Are we not all always submitting our work to be judged? Hoping to get chosen, and fitting what we create into acceptable work samples. And even beyond individual artists, at artist-run venues and spaces, I am thinking about how we talk about our work in ways of turning a profit, and if we have no choice but to create our own Pageant beer ads.

But the piece is full of hope. I think back to the lovers’ chase. One of them says, “I sleep all the time,” and when their lover says “Show me,” they fall asleep in order to demonstrate.

In return, their lover says, “I dance all the time.”

They say, “show me.”

The lover hesitates, and then says, facing the audience: “I don’t want to.” The lover doesn’t dance.

I DANCE ALL THE TIME is a piece that never loses sight of its audience—performers deliver well-timed glances, make jokes about creating, and ask for audience participation. The relationship between spectator and performer is clear and defined.

It uses the tension of this relationship to ask the audience: are we dancing all the time? As we walk in our day-to-day, do we occupy the same role as the human furniture? Are we pieces kept around to be used and then changed when necessary?

The audience watches as all of the characters (except the foam finger creature) join the human furniture.

They all create one long tunnel.

The foam finger creature begins to crawl through.

It is about to be birthed, but the lights black out.