In Skeleton Tree, artistic director Stephanie Lake’s latest dance production, a series of dance numbers are shown that are separate, but unified by their explorations into the anguish and intractability of loss and death. Throughout, Lake presents her talent to orchestrate the bodies of the dancers into images that haunt and linger long after. Most memorable of these are the ones created in the titular dance, where the three performers come together as a single, writhing, many-limbed organism that contorts across the stage. There is also Melting Mountain, during which two of the dancers strain and twist to Joan Baez’ Babe I’m Gonna Leave You in an effort to keep a connection the audience knows cannot last. The accumulative effect of the production is one of a deep and powerful force sweeping over the theatre: so much emotional force is conveyed by dancers that it goes past the territory of ‘immersion’ and into ‘enthralment’.
The range of musical choices — pop, folk, and one song from the Nick Cave album the show is named after — is a testament to the finesse of the dancers. Consistently, the production manages to hit very specific shades of grief as it evokes familiar responses and rituals, but always in its own unique physical language. There is a precise sense of subtlety: the costumes seem designed to efface artifice and occasionally the effect is ethereal. For many of the performances, the dancers’ bodies seem to be an object of the music, their movements pushed and pulled by its force. Much deliberation has been undertaken in order to create the illusion that the dancers are controlled rather than in control, and in its execution it is deeply disarming.
Both numbness and uncontrollable torrents of feeling are described through motion. These are fine balances to strike, and mostly this is well-executed, though there are brief flashes of repetition or symbolic overreach that come across as overwrought. These moments of broken immersion are few and far between and even as they're noticed, it must be reckoned whether or not this deep-dive into abject emotion would be too neat if they didn’t exist.
In Skeleton Tree, Lake makes an engulfing statement about the varied ways that people deal with grief. She has also masterfully made testament to the failure of any of these ways to satisfactorily fill the void death leaves in its wake. Go see it.
