Charles
Isherwood

January 11, 2016

“Chair or floor?” This startling question greets you as you enter “The Art of Luv (Part 1): Elliot” at the Under the Radar Festival. Audience members have the option of sitting in seats or plopping down on the floor near the performers — pillow provided, thank goodness. You are also offered a hot hand towel, as in a Japanese restaurant. The production, from the Royal Osiris Karaoke Ensemble, combines the atmospherics of a yoga or meditation class — we are given breathing instructions — with a quirky, mostly entertaining multimedia exploration of the dynamics of erotic attraction in contemporary culture. The concentration is exclusively on heterosexual desire, and even more specifically on what makes men attractive to women, although there is at least one passage devoted to the reverse. Two of the performers, Tei Blow and Sean McElroy, are seated on a slightly raised platform covered in fake grass. Above them loom three billowing sheets on which videos are projected. (The third performer, Eben Hoffer, who plays a more minor role, faces the other two at the end of a narrow black platform bisecting the auditorium.)