Dance review: Empty-Handed embraces chaos and pushes to extremes

The Biting School’s new dance work looks at struggle and letting go, with a surreal array of hazard tape, bread dough, mic cords, coffin tents, and more

By Janet Smith

Empty-Handed.

The Firehall Arts Centre presents Empty-Handed to October 5

“SEE THE MESS for what it is.”

This line from the wild and avant-garde new Empty-Handed could easily have applied to the anarchy on the stage near the end of The Biting School premiere. Amid a tangle of neon-hued mic cords, screaming-red caution tape, a discarded doll, and other detritus, dancers flailed cathartically.

But of course in this new work by choreographer Arash Khakpour, who performed with four others, the “mess” was also philosophical. With the world in the state it’s in, starting with an escalating war in the Middle East, it was easy to understand what kind of existential shit show the work was referring to.

As bewildering and as densely packed as it was—with surreal props, psychedelic projections, and primal screams—Empty-Handed seemed to be about a simple concept: accepting and then letting go of the mayhem of life in order to move on. As the choreographer put it in a program message, “We are sitting in the madness of the human experience”, a good cue to leave rational explanations at the door.

The Biting School often takes dance into realms of semi-extreme performance art. Drawing on the inspired lunacy of Alejandro Jodorowsky’s brilliant ‘70s freakout film The Holy Mountain, and working with like-minded battery opera, Khakpour has pushed ever further with this work. His game team of dancers—Marisa Gold, Hayley Gawthrop, Juolin Lee, and Antonio Somera, Jr.—fully committed to the painful, explosively emotional places that he took them. In one scene, they zipped and unzipped an invisible “zipper” up and down their chests, unleashing howls and laughter, and then fastening themselves in again. In another, dancers consecutively took turns gagging, as if inner trauma was about to spew out like so much projectile vomit.

Empty-Handed featured an eerily effective opening, the dancers emerging from coffin tents in masks made from dough—the substance drooping and sagging, pulling eye and mouth holes along with it. Their unearthly moans made a music all its own. The extended scene reminded us from the outset that we are all dancing our way to the grave. 

From there the piece became a chaotic ride, with numerous nods to The Holy Mountain—film clips, and even a turquoise, donut-shaped table straight out of the movie. There were truly odd, intermittent introductions of each dancer as archetypal characters (“The Fool”, “The Priestess”) and their favourite planets and drugs. Khakpour seemed to be getting at the toxicity of greed and corruption. Upping the feeling of being in an altered state, Candelario Andrade’s retro-kitschy projections danced with a dizzying array of text, ‘70s-acid-trip circles, and—in one of the most successful sections—video of hands shaping dough, as an extended group dance sequence expressively explored the malleability of identity and existence.

Empty-Handed was boldly experimental and took big chances. At times, it was also cryptic and uncomfortable—the latter largely because Khakpour was rawly and uninhibitedly exposing ugly feelings we’d rather pretend don’t exist. The ideas were sometimes too overloaded to unpack all at once, but the emotion and the concepts felt frighteningly real—the grip on mortality bracing. To his credit, Khakpour also worked through the struggle, with recurring images of cleansing fire, or of dancers going through healing water rituals and supporting each other. 

Empty-Handed is legit one of the most out-there pieces you’re likely to see on a Vancouver stage in a while—this coming from a person who has sat through shows where performers spend their time destroying computers with baseball bats and eating lemons out of each other’s mouths. Imagine some suit stumbling in on the “mess” and wondering what planet he’d been teleported to. This show is not for everyone. But on an arts scene that, let’s face it, sometimes plays it safe to a fault, we can all agree that the Firehall is opening its season with a production that actually takes real risks.  

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