The Brooklyn Rail

Sitting beneath the arched dome and stained glass of Judson Church in Greenwich Village, I can’t help but consider the venue’s storied past, here, where the postmodern dance movement took root in the 1960s. Today, instead of church pews, seating for Out-FRONT! Fest. 2025 is a double row of folding chairs bordering the immaculate wood floor on three sides. Curated by the artist collective Pioneers Go East, the festival celebrates LGBTQ+ and feminist voices, a mission the earlier dance pioneers would surely applaud. The weeklong festival, now in its third year, features seven performances plus a film series.

Tonight’s double bill of Miranda Brown and Noa Rui-Piin Weiss (who is also a Rail contributor) in !!simon says~~!:));)$$ plus vessels, with Nattie Trogdon and Hollis Bartlett, opens the festival. Brown and Weiss describe their collaboration as an investigation of what it means to make a (good) dance joke. !!simon says~~!:));)$$ is great fun—refreshingly humorous, while also calling subtle attention to inherent power structures and what it means to follow certain rules. In vessels, Nattie Trogdon and Hollis Bartlett have fashioned a striking selection of machine-like drills that is humanized by the pair’s shared sensory attunement.

For !!simon says~~!:));)$$, Brown and Weiss enter and lie on the floor beneath a screen projection that reads, “The dancers lie on the floor.” They’ve taken my favorite yoga pose, savasana, or corpse pose, while the projections cycle through a series of relaxing prompts: “They are sensing and feeling, noticing … they allow their heads to fall to the left.” Eventually, the two rise to a seated position: “they root their anuses,” and I wonder if I’m the only one watching who finds that prompt amusing. Thus, the wily humor of Brown and Weiss enters the house.

The performers comically struggle to comply with increasingly abstract and zany instructions: “They make a silky transition. … They have a serious conversation with their knee. … They make a big circle.” There’s a set where the two high five an escalating series of un-high-fiveable activities: disappointing their parents, disassociating, having doubts. One wonders how far this will go. Is there a request they will refuse? ‘The dancer(s) touch the ceiling” inspires some precarious chair stacking and the use of two extension ladders. It’s a sly bit. When, with some chutzpah, the two eventually succeed, lights flash like they’ve won first prize in a game show.

Brown and Weiss inhabit the posture, flexibility, and presence of trained dancers, but the show’s choreography is task-based. I get a sense of Laurel and Hardy. A mixture of pop workout and disco tunes operates in the background, like the soundtrack for a silent movie. The pace gets frenzied when “Glistening” inspires the performers to apply glitter: a sparkly spangled jacket for Brown; Weiss strips to a pair of mylar short shorts. Given “The dancers dance to the music,” the two begin step-tapping as if warming up in a cardio workout. Cue Donna Summer, and the “exercisers” get more creative. Utterly charming, Weiss takes a slow balletic pirouette. “The audience applauds.”

After intermission, Trogdon and Bartlett bring in an entirely different dynamic. Vessels both challenges and delights with its structure and regimen. The two performers face upstage, their backs to the audience for most of the piece. In tandem they walk forward with purpose on barefoot relevé and pause. Then on some shared yet invisible signal, they reverse the path—I think of ballerinas en pointe, picking their way backward. The choreography is like drill team work. Precise, repetitive. They lunge with arms extended upward in a V. I can hear their feet slapping the floor. The only prop is a row of hot pink neon bars configured at the base of the former church altar. They zip on, then fizzle off, randomly.

There’s a deceptive simplicity about vessels: the precision, variance of speed coupled with stillness, a compelling display of balance, straight lines, geometric shapes. Even the hands hold my attention—fingers in a subtle arrangement, as if they might be read as runes. Standing with their backs to me—hands on waist with elbows akimbo, knees flexed—the dancers create diamonds of empty space that remind me of the vintage Hull vases my grandmother used to collect. Is this the kind of vessel they have in mind? Or is their referenced container the human body itself, filled with experiences and beliefs? In the program notes, these two, partners in life as well as dance, reference a shared archive of material they draw from.

As the piece progresses, so does the momentum of the choreography. Bartlett whirs his arms like a windmill. The movement footprint expands and the pair varies its facings. Their unison trails off on occasion, as when Trogdon takes a few additional steps to finish a phrase after Bartlett has arrived at stillness. Sometimes they move like speed skaters. In one particularly engaging segment the two criss-cross the stage, like swimmers backstroking in adjacent lanes of a lap pool.

The lights dim and a loud buzzing takes over the silence. (The program credits “sounds from a 2021 Honda Accord Hybrid electric vehicle.”) The dancers work more independently now, she from one side, he from the other. Bartlett takes the speed-skating move into a run, slapping his feet with his hands behind him. When he leans forward, the momentum launches him into a turn. Trogdon falls to her knees, and lunges like an iguana, low with back arched and arms wide. The buzzing ends. The dancers pause. I can hear their heavy breathing. She puts a hand on his shoulder and I realize they haven’t touched before. They take hold of one another’s forearms—he’s facing upstage, she’s facing downstage. They tug in different directions, then stop, look at each other, and walk offstage—agreeing to part ways.