Maryinsky Ballet - John Percival

Once more into the pool

Agora II
Noemie LaFrance
McCarren Park Pool,
Brooklyn, NY
September 29, 2006

by Tom Phillips
copyright ©2006 by Tom Phillips

On the corner of Lorimer and Meeker Streets under the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway early last Friday evening , a gaggle of confused Manhattanites and a couple of visitors from Wisconsin were wondering how to get from the subway to the McCarren Park Pool, the empty relic that is the setting for Noemie LaFrance’s new spectacle, Agora II. Along came an eleven-year-old girl on a scooter. “Follow me,” she said, “I’m in the show.”

Agora II is billed by the artist as “a choreographic game for one thousand bodies,” including numerous kids. It’s the sequel to last year’s audacious production, which aimed to resurrect this abandoned city recreation site. This year, it’s more of a community event — a logical progression from the first splash, though maybe less of an artistic coup.

Many of the elements are familiar: a lady with a long red train spilling a suitcase full of orange balls, a solid citizen in an armchair watching TV, skateboarders being whirled around on their backs, acrobats diving into a plastic mini-pool. The main addition is hundreds of “players,” audience members who leap into the pool and get into the game, dancing, jogging or riding bikes or scooters in mass movements that punctuate the plot.

Different viewers might find different plots, but to me, it revolved around five ladies in ashen makeup and vaguely Asian costumes, played by the “Butoh Rockettes.” At the beginning, the lifeless form of one of them is borne into the pool by two strong men, and buried in a manhole on the floor. Later all five emerge from the same hole, zombie-like, and the object of the game is to bring them back to life.

The mood shifts back and forth from tension and fear to communal ease, including one idyllic scene where several sopranos circle leisurely around the space on bicycles, vocalizing wordlessly. Toward the end, the performers gather in a big knot around the Butoh zombies, then explode in a big bang outward.

Voila! The dead ladies are up on their toes, dancing in the middle of the vast space as a disco ball spins overhead. The rest of the cast spreads out, dancing toward the audience ringed around the edges of the pool. Then, for some reason, the grownups solemnly strip off their clothes and stand naked for a few minutes, then lie down and go to sleep, then wake up and get dressed again for a big block party, open to all with an African drumming band laying down a funky dance beat.

It’s festive, it’s fun, and you can hang around long after the performance per se is over. But it doesn’t quite have the impact of last year’s revolutionary opening, when the space was literally transformed from a menacing urban wasteland. A hard act to follow.

Whether it has anything to do with the show I don’t know, but the neighborhood around the pool is changing dramatically. I counted at least four big residential buildings in the surrounding blocks, either going up or being renovated. One is called the “Aurora,” and it promises “the dawn of luxury” in this historically gritty working-class district. It’s certainly better than the night of the living dead. But it’s just another reminder to be careful what you wish for.

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Once more into the pool