How does Attack Theatre manage to create a show that feels like a romp through Kennywood with one's most adventurous and free-spirited friends? For Pittsburgh dance enthusiasts, Attack company members are those friends.
For a two week run, the company transformed the former strip district nightclub, Questions, into a unique playground where everyone's inner child and rebellious teenager wished they could play. Attack not only produced an entertaining show, but succeeded in keeping their signature tongue and cheek style fresh.
Rather than morphing the nightclub into a typical proscenium space, the club feel remained. Audience members were free to sit on barstools, mill about the balcony, or take a seat at dinner-like tables on the old dance floor.
A bar near the entrance was converted into a stage for the dancers. Against a neighboring wall, alternating Pittsburgh musicians used a second stage to accompany the dance and re-interpret one another's music. Friday, Ben Hardt and the Symphony played favorites from their repertory, and interpreted the works of Deoro (the Attack Theatre band), Daryl Fleming and The Public Domain, and Chatham Baroque.
Act one served as an homage to the former club scene. Co-Artistic Director, Peter Kope, played the part of the bartender and got stuck answering questions from mysterious callers, at inopportune times. Company members buzzed in and out of the "bar" from the balcony with Attack-like physicality, complete with a simulated bar fight and a hip shaking dance party that asked the question - "Voulez-vous coucher avec moi ce soir?"
Act two featured the band of the evening. The company interpreted the lyrics of the music in a series of varying solos, duets, trios and quartets. The power of the music drove the movement. All five dancers had the crisp legs and feet of a Cunningham performer, and the daring to make Elizabeth Streb very proud.
The third and final act featured all six dancers in an exploration of the entire space. The dance took place in and around (and trapped inside) bar stools, up and down the three stairwells, through a moving doorway, and dangling from the heights of the balcony. No space seemed to be left untouched.
Going strong in their 15th year, Attack Theatre continues to expand upon an idea that has held importance to them since day one: place. In "Site/Re-site," Attack used their wildest imaginations to bring to life an organized evening of entertainment and surprise, all the while maintaining the integrity of modern dance.
The company truly provides a legacy for this hundred-year-old art form. While, in the era of So You Think You Can Dance, the dumbing down of "contemporary" comes to us straight through the television screen, we can be sure that Attack Theatre will keep innovating and growing.
The most appropriate "question" of the evening was the one company member Ashley Williams asked in her program biography: "Does it get any better than this?" For Pittsburgh, it most certainly does not.
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