On PPE Waves: A New Normal?
by Carina Xu | SCA MA Graduate Student
As the projection operator for this show, I sat for a few nights at the back of PPE Waves: A New Normal? The show reminded me of some unanswered questions I had previously set aside: What norms have the past four pandemic waves formed? What is our experience of ‘post-pandemic euphoria’? If we take a step back, are 'post-pandemic' expressions practical at all, given that there is still no end in sight under the global threat? More often than not, I find myself overwhelmed attempting to navigate a living and breathing crisis. Though I believe PPE Waves sketches a philosophic (and apocalyptic at times) vision that entertains the twists and turns down the thorny path investigating human conditions in the pandemic.
PPE Waves is a contemporary dance repertory directed by Dr. Henry Daniel; it consists of works by faculty, students, and guest artists. The repertory takes on an assemblage of memes, vérité monologue, pop songs, and classical compositions. Its humorous moments and conventional counterparts coalesce into a riveting space where tactile and haptic movements unfold. As the night progresses, the dancers assume varying roles that embody contrastive emotions, singing passionately with voice cracks or remaining unsettlingly quiet while traversing the stage tip-toeing. They would appear an expressive party of witty characters in one scene and an isolated entity manipulated by an alienating force in another.
Adopting the structure of M.C. Escher’s Belvedere, PPE Waves renders the pandemic as an impossible paradox where its subjects are stuck in a perpetual state of surrealist madness. It proposes that perhaps the frustration and mania we are experiencing resulted from some disillusionment — from staring at a puzzle that appears visually valid but practically impossible to solve. From a particular perspective, the Belvedere paradox encapsulates our confusing experience of the shifting realities in over a year and half.
Due to loosened restrictions in mid-June, we briefly resurfaced with more gatherings at the beginning of the summer. But the social antidotes to our isolation quickly became ambiguous activities as the delta variant struck. Towards the end of 2021, we are still living within lifted and again tightened capacity limits, planning for reopening and returning under the uncertain threat of variants.
This alternating reality in our daily lives causes an error in our bodies and moods. Without a breakthrough like we hoped for, our surge capacity sits on the verge of depletion in acute stressful situations. In an extended period of crisis, it stretches indefinitely beyond unlabelled thresholds. These malfunctions curiously manifested on stage as if it was haunted. During tech and dress rehearsals, disco lights would refuse to leave the scene, and snow machine failed to activate despite consecutive operations in previous runs.
PPE Waves comprises several individual segments that explore what transmits between individuals and the collective (more than viruses). Rather than offering a definition of the new normal, it reproduces forces that string our bodies together in strange tides and conceals an antidote for the deranged minds trapped in erratic settings.
Converging dance, sculpture, sound, lighting, and video, this multisensorial repertory threads environmental and metaphysical ruminations and seals its key in a cube placed at the stage’s centre. The fever dream-like choreography moves its ephemeral characters in and out of frozen surfaces and mutating germs, making a passage through waves of destabilized time and climate.
Developed by Artistic Director Dr. Henry Daniel, PPE Waves: A New Normal? was presented from November 17 – 20, 2021, in the Fei & Milton Wong Experimental Theatre at SFU Goldcorp Centre for the Arts, the home of the School for the Contemporary Arts, and performed by the SCA Repertory Dancers with guest artists Diane Sowter and Kyle Toy.
For more about PPE Waves: A New Normal? and to read all of the credits and biographies, please visit HERE.
About Carina Xu
The centre of Carina Xu’s research concerns the potential of combining experimental documentary and video installation to convene a public sphere for people of colour to process the memory of ethnic diaspora and cultivate a public memory reflexive of their intersectionality. It also explores how public spaces can be mediated by community media and personalized media to engage those who share common sentiments of immigration, migration, and eviction to envision a place of belonging.