“Super Nothing” Is Super, Nothing
By Garth Grimball
Titles and endings are notoriously difficult to produce. How to articulate in a word or phrase the concepts in a work? How to wrap up all the preceding ideas into a satisfying summation? So many endings can disappoint because they feel like an afterthought, like the artist wasn’t sure how to finish so why not just try this. So many titles compete in the attention economy while bumping into existing trademarks or intellectual property issues that they may seem like a last resort.
ODC Theater presented Super Nothing by Miguel Gutierrez on Feb 28-Mar 2, and it is a work that triumphantly does not succumb to the difficulty of titles and endings. Its title is so precise that I have continued to chew on it. Its ending is so cogent that it made me wonder if maybe Gutierrez, like the author John Irving, knows the ending before he begins.
The 70-minute long quartet is supercharged with dancing but, perhaps, unconcerned with having “something” to say. What does it mean to have “nothing” to say, to have “nothing” as a meaning? I don’t think the dance should be described as a dance for dance’s sake, as there is more there than people dancing on stage. But, the choreography, the performance qualities, and the sound and lighting designs all seem to be purposeful in their absence of a graspable meaning. It’s not an evasion. It’s a presentation of nothing as something. A nothing that was certain and full.
Justin Faircloth walked onto the stage with a cloud-like mass hanging above it as an automated voice gave instructions:
Please give attention.
Pay attention…It’s something.
A line is not…
If you can surrender, you must.
Wendell Gray II, Jay Carlon, and Evelyn Sanchez Narvaez joined Faircloth in a series of duets and solos that moved through spoking arms and legs, whip turns, hitting poses, stomping, leaping, vogueing, dabbing, conducting, and, most frequently, humping or gyrating. Pelvic thrusts and spasms punctuated the dance like tactful commas to elicit brief pauses, or like parentheses that contained whole conversations. Sometimes the grinding was playful and exploratory like when a kid discovers that rubbing against objects can feel good. Twice Carlon layed on top of Faircloth in the upstage corner, dual thrusting ensued, the first time was horny, the second was conciliatory.
The foursome met in the center collapsing into each other, intertwining limbs, palming sweaty flesh. Later they returned to center and formed a tableau: one dancer prostrated on the floor, another checking for a pulse, the remaining two flanking the body as if waiting for news. Narvaez left the group and walked into the seated audience, jangling her bracelet as she climbed through a row of seats.
The music and lighting were equally as referential and abstract as the choreography. Wind chimes, medicine bowls, and explosive sounds were interpolated by samples from Ellie Goulding and Justin Timberlake pop singles in Rosana Cabán’s composition. Carolina Ortiz’s lighting design kept the dancers in soft hues until the final third of the dance when planet-like circles were lit onto the back wall and a rectangular special scanned the floor, searching or collecting.
Super Nothing climaxed in big unison choreography of claps, lunges, swipes and pushes that devolved into high-octane solos. The quartet calmed into a line with arms stretched out to the sides. They slowly receded backward and drifted off stage. The ending wasn’t a bang or a whimper. It was a trail to something, to nothing.
Garth Grimball is a dance writer and artist based in Oakland, CA. He is a contributor to SF Examiner and Dance Media. He is the editor of ODC’s Dance Stories.
Life as a Modern Dancer 
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