Salt Horse's multi-sensory dance show rips through Seattle Central

A tea kettle whistles in the corner of a dark room, signaling the beginning of the performance. Fuzzy, looped sounds blend in alongside the shrill, haunting sound of the kettle. A hunched man walks onto the stage clinging to a frame. He gingerly sits on a bench before rising shakily to his knees. He then sits back down and repeats the motion several times as a dark figure slithers in, its head wrapped in plastic piping that crunches and pops as the dancer cranks its head back and forth.

Salt Horse's performance “Man on the Beach” debuted Friday at Seattle Central Community College's Erickson Theater. The performance piece was inspired by a real man who Beth Graczyk, one of the founding members of Seattle-based dance company Salt Horse, saw while walking on a beach in Port Townsend. Although unexplainable, the man's movements opened Graczyk's imagination in search of his story.

Graczyk presented the idea to the other members of Salt Horse, dancer Corrie Befort and musician Angelina Baldoz. And with the help of several other dancers, the group guided the audience through their own multi-sensory expressions of the storyline.

Although there is an overarching narrative, the group choreographs their movements and music with room for interpretation. Each member adds their own layers of meaning, which continue to evolve when the audience's reaction is brought into play.

In fact, the mission of Salt Horse is to provide an opportunity for the audience to react to each image, sound and movement in their own way. The movements made by Graczyk, Befort and other dancers along with the live music performed by Baldoz are created through the use of internal imagery.

The images, which are often impossible scenarios, include imagining your head is full of birds or that you are drawing lines between the stars.

Salt Horse focuses less on the specifics of their external movements and sounds and more on expressing an idea. This method serves as a way to share a mood with other performers.

“It's a very good way of sharing an atmosphere among people, an instant connecting and pulling us all together,” Befort said. “It's a way to communicate without directing, to lend narratives.”

It is also a way to tell a story that is completely open to interpretation.

“We do have these literal narratives and characters but we don't tell the story to be understood as a linear story,” Graczyk said.

One of the performers, Michael Rioux, channeled his understanding of “Man on the Beach” into visual art. The pieces, which can be seen in the lobby of the Erickson Theater, range from abstract paintings to sculptures forged out of emptied doll parts. One specific sculpture changes with perspective; from one angle it is a doll lying flat, and from the other end a tiny forest is visible within the doll's hollow chest cavity.

Like the doll, most of the show feels both alien and familiar, like watching a nightmare backward. Dancers mirror each others' steps, sometimes with gaps in between so it's like watching a visual echo. Props—which include a jarring sculpture of tangled blue chairs and a pair of empty shoes that move of their own accord—invite the audience to attach their own meanings to these every day, yet out of context, objects.

Feel free to react to and interpret the story of the “Man on the Beach,” which takes place Friday and Saturday night at Seattle Central's Erickson Theater, located on Harvard Avenue between East Pike Street and East Pine Street.

Jennifer may be reached at jwilliams@su-spectator.com

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