You might not expect a project subtitled “A multi-media dance drama based on The Tibetan Book of the Dead” to generate laughter. But, then, you may not know about Krissy Keefer, the local dancer/choreographer/producer/feminist/activist/provocateur who operates out of San Francisco’s Dance Mission Theater.
Last weekend at Oakland’s Laney College Theater, Keefer’s Dance Brigade—11 barefoot local dancers and a team of talented collaborators—launched an ambitious extravaganza that concerned nothing less cosmic than death and reincarnation. Anybody who thought they were in for a sober, non-stop 70 minutes would have been disabused of that notion in the first five minutes of the piece Sunday evening (Nov. 15). Dressed in a lab coat and sporting what looks like a TV antenna on her head, Keefer, portraying Vajravahari, Sow Diamond Goddess, wheels out a table, uncovers a pig’s head and proceeds to salt and pepper the object. The idea is be nice to porkers; they might be somebody’s grandparents. Later in the evening, Keefer catechizes the audience on the meaning of “pig” in their society. The political correctness is so thick, you could cut it with a machete.
They’re amusing routines, but they’re topped by Keefer’s version of a TV game show on which contestants’ good deeds are examined with a view to their after-death destiny. We get the Door No. 1, Door No. 2 bits and even a “commercial” before the contestant, Lena Gatchalian, is assigned a lower place in the eternal karmic order for unspecified “sexual misdeeds.”
There’s tremendous brio here, but I am not sure that Keefer (who collaborated with Sara Shelton Mann) is aware of how these episodes affect the tone of the entire piece, which probably started out being serious before the collaborators realized that they were, in effect, sending up The Tibetan Book of the Dead. Keefer just can’t resist being outrageously funny. The dancing is profuse, varied and expert, but one tires of all the descents and contorted partnerning gambits long before the piece runs its course.
Keefer has drawn on a superior assemblage of Bay Area dancers. In saffron and burgundy robes, Folawole’s monk makes ominous appearances. The Lord of Death, the striking Ramon Ramos Alayo perches high on a platform, where he subjects Tina Banchero to the kind of tableaux you find in Asian sex manuals. Everyone gets to trot out their specialty. A man regales us with his jetés. Frderika Keefer (the choreographer’s daughter) displays her training in ballet. José Navarette rolls around the floor.
And this being a Dance Brigade enterprise, everything needs to stop for an obligatory and fierce episode of taiko drumming, which was, in fact, loud enough to raise the dead. Exorcism seems beside the point. Keefer seems to delight in Hellzapoppin’ diversity, but this work is, believe it or not, far more focused than any of the earlier pieces I’ve seen and far more accomplished in the dancing.
The Great Liberation upon Hearing looks professional, thanks to Matthew De Gumbia’s artful projections and Elaine Buckholtz’s lighting. What it misses is what Keefer cites during the work: luminosity.
The Great Liberation upon Hearing will be repeated Thursday-Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 7 p.m. at Laney College Theater, 900 Fallon, Oakland. (415) 273-4633; www.brownpapertickets.com
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