The Brooklyn Rail

In Angelic Architectures, “bitch” contains multitudes. From the derogatory to the familiar to the wondrous, the word’s meaning shape shifts like the best of slang in Symara Sarai’s deft choreopoem.

Midway through this new evening-length work, Sarai finds the declarative love she has been seeking (read: verbally demanding of the audience) reciprocated by performer and collaborator Kashia Kancey. The two dance in a unison adagio of tilts, bends, and promenades repeating the phrase “I love you” like a private mantra said aloud. Though what they are saying is most often an intimate thing, their bodies glide through the motions indifferently and their lack of eye contact creates emotional distance.

But the temperature changes when they turn to face one another. Rounds of “I love you,” are traded for “Bitch.” What starts out tense becomes softer as the pair move in closer to each other. Surprise (“Bitch?”) turns into a kind of recognition (“Bitch.”), and then a term of endearment (“Bitch…”) as they eventually touch cheek to cheek. The duet quiets as it devolves into grappling. But sweet and sexy are just pitstops on the road to slapstick and rage. Interlocked or apart, Sarai and Kancey take kisses and moan, writhing to the penultimate coping place: humor, fueled by a self-aware anger.

If repetition is the choreographic game in the largely textual vignettes of Angelic Architectures, then the numerous tone changes show off the agility of the cast, which also includes performer and collaborator Kentoria Earle and sound designer and vocalist CHIMI. Subtext directs their movement and vocal scores, turning the gaps between intention and action, speech and body language, into a playground for the performers.

Sarai is an interdisciplinary artist on the rise. In addition to this production, which emerged out of a two-year Abrons Arts Center Performance AIRspace Residency, she is also currently a featured artist in MoMA PS1’s Greater New York exhibition. In 2025 she was named one of Dance Magazine’s “25 to Watch” and received a Bessie nomination for Outstanding Performer.

Sarai’s collaborators share her talent for creating compelling characters. When onstage together, the dancers form a formidable crew, stomping up and down the aisle of the audience to begin the show and calling out warnings to the “woman with the fresh cut.” Later, they drag out stuffed chairs wrapped in plastic and sit on them in an almost inviting way, legs crossed and profiles sharp as they engage in a one-sided dialogue with an unseen partner. But soon the conversational is confrontational again as their voices rise and chairs are tossed. They slip and slide in ridiculous positions, shouting invectives against a perceived enemy, cautioning the air to “watch your tone,” and running into the audience to accost laughing audience members. Their limbs tear at the rails of the risers we sit on as CHIMI murmurs from her sound booth downstage into the mic: “you know what, you know what, you know what aaaaaaahhhhhh.” Eventually they come for her and her table too.

Production designer Caz Slattery’s synthetic set is built for the thrashing it takes. The women make waves with the red plastic curtains that frame the space, pulling them in and out with adrenaline strength. The pillowy chairs are practical—a guard against concussions—and funny. Simultaneously puffy and flaccid, they become impotent weapons that add hilarity in correlation to rising anger.

But like someone who is practiced with a switchblade, Sarai knows every joke is just one quick jab away from cutting deep.

When she inhabits the postures and calls of a preacher, breathing heavily into her testimony, the chastising language is full of witty one-liners like, “I’m the only thing here that is linear, you abstract hoe.” We are her congregation, fully lit in Ava Elizabeth Novak’s lighting design. CHIMI and Sarai exchange a call and response where we learn we are disappointing her with our lying. We disappoint her even more with our silence when she asks earnestly, “Do you love me?” But when Kancey dashes onstage to save us and profess her love, there is a sense that Sarai is unprepared for this possibility.

In this ecclesiastical bit, we know we can’t help, and we are left to watch the disillusionment play out. But near the end, when the production feels church-y again, a sense of hope hovers on the horizon. The women step-touch, snap, and sing like a trio of backup singers. CHIMI joins and they become a gospel choir that hits the high notes.

Perhaps because the harmony is either too strong or not strong enough to end on, the scene devolves into a melee. Chairs, boxes, and a mattress are thrown onto the stage for battering. The deranged pillow fight feels like the darkest one yet, given the proximity of redemption in the last scene and the rants addressed to sexual predators. Anger returns as the most consistent comfort in this production. The dancers kick, stomp, smash, and punch, but it is hard to tell if their traumas are waning under this barrage or winning.

Sarai seems to intuit this inclination. She senses this natural desire for transcendence and understanding, for everything to happen for a reason and to end up okay. So she squashes it.

“There are no fucking dreams come true,” is the last thing I note before the lights cut to black.