Courtesy of Sydney Bryan
Associate Professor of Dance Shawn Hove’s company, shove gently dance, put on its show “a fine wine, and the game…” in the Martha Myers Studio on Sept. 2 and 3. The multidisciplinary performance was nothing short of fascinating, a word barely strong enough to properly describe the experience of watching this performance. The show’s official site describes “a fine wine…” as “an evening of dance/ theater created around the macabre tale ‘The Cask of Amontillado’ by Edgar Allen Poe,” but that does not even begin to describe the many layers to this performance.
As a long-time fan of Poe and the gothic and macabre, I was beyond excited to watch Hove’s new show, but in no way could I have anticipated what I was about to witness. “a fine wine…” was layered and complicated, combining dance with acting and pieces of sound design and video editing to form the performances of each cast member into a beautifully coherent show. As a self-professed lover of weird art – any art that makes me feel something beyond the expected, things that unsettle me and leave me thinking for days after the metaphorical curtain falls – I am well aware that “a fine wine…” will definitely not be everyone’s favorite. But, I am certain that no one left the theater feeling ambivalent about what they just watched.
Not only was this performance created by a member of the Connecticut College faculty, but it also featured a number of current students and alumni. Among the performers were recent alumni Angelina Annino ‘20, Journee Hardaway ’21, and Mary Fitzgerald ‘22, and current students Sophie Barr ‘23 and Jo Duckett ‘25. Annino, Hardaway, Fitzgerald, and Barr filled various roles – dancers, technicians, and stage managers – while Duckett played the role of Mardy, the only character in the entire production to speak.
Duckett, as Mardy, tells the story of “The Cask of Amontillado,” Poe’s tale of one family wronged by another and hell-bent on revenge. This version of the classic story, though, asks a new question upon reaching its conclusion: Why does it have to be this way? Mardy wonders why this has to be a story that ends in tragedy, that ends in madness, revenge, and anger, instead of a story ending in forgiveness and efforts to rebuild bridges. In the role of Mardy, Duckett is nothing short of a magnetic performer. Even while the dancers were performing in the center of the room, I found it more and more difficult to look away from Duckett as the show progressed, whether they were moving around the performance space, only a few steps away from the audience, or only visible on the television screen at the back of the stage.
An incredible range of emotion was on display in Duckett’s performance as they progressed from reciting a nearly robotic broadcast at the beginning of the show to mounting suspicion – nearing madness – as they continued with their tale, only to end with an almost disbelieving sense of hope as they wonder if it is possible to do better the next time this story is told. In the post-show talkback with Hove and the cast, it was revealed that the script was changed during rehearsals as soon as only a few days before the show opened, which only makes Duckett’s performance all the more impressive. I only wish I was given more time to take in the performance, more time to sit with the many nuances of this one character, to peel back the carefully crafted layers.
Despite admittedly not being well versed in the various technical nuances of modern dance and merely a casual appreciator of the style, I think that the dance itself was a marvel to watch. There was almost something uncanny about the movements of the dancers in this show, something just far enough from natural human movements to be unsettling. As someone with minimal experience in both watching and performing modern dance, I cannot speak to the various minutiae of the choreography itself, but despite my lack of detailed knowledge, I can say that the choreography perfectly complemented – if not added to – the story that was being told. A solo piece performed by Annino perfectly opened the show, moving fluidly throughout the space, eventually pouring a glass full of wine midway through the dance and setting on a bucket in the center of the stage, leaving the audience to wonder what will be done with the precariously perched glass.
In their dance duet, Hardaway and Barr led each other blindly around the perimeter of the dance space, hands resting just barely atop a wire designed to send an echoing hum out of the speakers upon contact, their blind trust in each other leaving the audience wondering what could happen if either one of them made a single misstep. This duet, paired with the mounting tension to be found in Duckett’s performance surrounding the dancers, allowed the audience to feel the increase in pressure within the story, the rise in fear that could have been found in the original readers of this dark tale. On the whole, all three of them gave fantastic performances, their movements managing to add an immeasurable amount to the story being told without ever speaking a single word.
Although entirely unintentional, a technical difficulty on Saturday evening’s show somehow managed to add to the eerie ambiance of the performance. For nearly the entirety of the show’s hour-long duration, an LED light flickered from the back of the theater. During the post-show Q&A, Hove revealed that the flickering was entirely unintentional, and a number of the performers revealed that while the light was unexpected, it merely added to the tense ambiance of the performance. In terms of other technical issues, at some points in the show, it was difficult to hear the monologue amidst the other pieces of sound design, but despite that difficulty, there was always something to be watched during this show.
If I could, I would have spent hours peeling back the many layers and pieces of this show, piecing together the many mysteries it leaves to be unraveled by the audience, but I simply have to be content with the questions it has left lingering in my mind. Although I am certain – merely from the discussions held in my dance class this past week – that not every member of the audience of “a fine wine, and the game…” enjoyed it as much as I did, I, for one, am more than excited to find more weird art, to seek out unexpected performances that leave me with more questions even long after I’ve left the theater.
