The Grammar of Regret
Conduit Studio, 918 SW Yamhill, 4th Floor, 221-5857, Fri-Sat 8 pm, Sun 3 and 7 pm, closes Dec 11, $12-15
Tere Mathern’s The Grammar of Regret is a well-titled effort that sports lovely production values, skilled dancers, and no narrative vision whatsoever. Now, before you get mad, let me explain what I mean by “narrative”: I’m not talking a “once upon a time” story with a beginning, middle, and end. Naturally, those terms don’t necessarily apply to dance, an art form that communicates primarily through physical movement. By “narrative,” I mean something that feels greater than the sum of its parts, whether we understand what that something is or not. Indeed, that struggle to “understand” is often part of the fun.
Grammar, despite artfully displaying Mathern’s fluidly choppy, almost martial arts-influenced style, lacks dramatic substance. Music selections come and go (including cool, ambient works by local rock band Tracker), colorful lights flow in and out, but it all feels arbitrary, partly because the dancers don’t seem to be responding to the constantly shifting songs at all, and partly because kinetic variety is virtually nonexistent. A sweaty, breathless pace is established early on (you can hear the performers panting at times) and is never deviated from. Dancers flop and grasp, chop and bend, their sleek, shiny outfits sparkling on a tireless journey through repetitive rhythms and movement patterns. The piece becomes mechanical after a while, almost robotic, a stark contrast to its emotion-oriented mission statement, which is to reflect on “the complexity and nature of regret by examining the ways we express it in sentiment and language.” There is no reflection in Grammar, let alone a feeling of regret or sadness; it is pure ornamentation with nothing to say about anything outside itself.
Mathern prefaces her piece with a new work by Gregg Bielemeier, featuring movement from Robyn Conroy and Mathern herself. This strange, absurdist duet takes on the feel of a Dali painting—replete with a dreamy, detached brassy soundtrack—and has absolutely no connection to the preceding efforts from Mathern and Company. But then, in an evening without a speck of vision already, I suppose it fits right in.