Review: (Bound)

Explore Dance

Written By: Sarah J. Hart

Three walls, pushed into different positions by restless dancers, become the boundaries within, on, and against which the dramas of this piece take place. At times they represent the walls of buildings, other times they are the barrier surrounding Palestine, and sometimes they are the surface of computer screens. These walls define the space within which human relationships take place. They determine parameters of privacy, ownership, and rights. They shape the landscape of expectation and hope, and they are the implacable obstacles against which the soft stuff of bodies and emotions must respond.

There are three main narratives in Bound. One is that of a father and daughter. He seems rough, perhaps to the point of abusive, and there is something unsettling in the child’s mute but ineffective rebellion. Although their interactions are muffled by apartment walls, energy thwarted will, of course, reappear elsewhere. In this case it bursts forth in the girl’s strangely explosive behavior and later, when a concerned neighbor finally breaches the invisible wall of appropriate intervention, it ignites a new and passionate relationship.

Another narrative is that of a Palestinian street artist. We see him in video – a man with long hair who sometimes plays guitar but is more often running – running and running – along the unrelenting wall at the border between Israel and Palestine. He has the unwavering focus of a caged animal circling an enclosure. In other clips we see him high up, perhaps on a roof top, gazing over a view of buildings and sky. Here his horizon is expanded, but his movement is strictly restricted. Dancers enact the story of this artist. They push and press against the walls and worry the surface; their restless obsession sometimes in juxtaposition with the dreamy pace of the video.

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