Labyrinth
Opening Night: October 9, 2014
Closing: October 26, 2014
Theater: Abrons Arts Center Henry Street Settlement
OBIE and Bessie Award-winning choreographer Mark Dendy brings his signature wit, intense physicality, and searing social commentary to the Abrons in the premiere of Labyrinth, an autobiographically-inspired retelling of the Theseus myth. Dendy’s tragicomic dance-play explores a world of inner demons and redemption, by way of a midlife crisis. In Labyrinth, Dendy interweaves character portraiture, myth, autobiography, and fantasy. Set in New York City, with Theseus hailing from Athens, Georgia, and aided by a transgender Ariadne, the hero quest is given a picaresque spin. En route to choreograph a Rockettes number, an artistically conflicted Theseus washes down anti-anxiety pills with absinthe just as Superstorm Sandy is approaching the city. His journey through the mythic labyrinth is peopled with a Jungian underworld of colorful, disenfranchised characters, and pits him against multiple forces including a mechanical bull at the Bellevue Psych Ward. The play is performed by Mark Dendy, Heather Christian, Stephen Donovan, and Matthew Hardy, with sound, music, and video created live on stage by the performers amid an ever-changing set of found objects.
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October 17, 2014
What’s in the center of Mark Dendy’s Labyrinth? Maybe it’s the man dressed as a mechanical bull. Maybe it’s the “dea ex machina” in the see-through raincoat? Maybe it’s Mr. Dendy himself, sorting through decades of anxiety and injury. Mr. Dendy, 53, a Broadway choreographer who also creates and performs original work, structures this autobiographical piece around the myth of Theseus. This Theseus, played by Mr. Dendy, is on his way to create a new dance for the Rockettes when he has a psychotic break in the middle of Times Square. This seems like a sensible response to so many flashing lights and furry characters, but Theseus winds up on the psych ward, trying to navigate the labyrinth of his own whirling mind. Staged in the Abrons Arts Center’s grim underground theater (maybe Daedalus could do an upgrade?), Labyrinth combines Mr. Dendy’s confessional speeches with dance, video and Heather Christian’s feisty and imaginative songs. A dead transgender sex worker, Princess Pawnie Ariadne (also played by Mr. Dendy), shows up as a coke-addled spirit guide, but the real animating forces are Carl Jung, Joseph Campbell and the kind of performance work Mr. Dendy first encountered in the East Village 30 years ago. “Telling personal stories and dancing about them in public is so ’80s,” Stephen Donovan sneers, as Theseus’ shadow self.
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