Dance Linkages Challenges and Delights its Audience with Invitation Situation

Dance Linkages presents The Invitation Situation
a dance theater work by Jeanine Durning, 
made for and by Heidi Brewer, Clare Croft, Andee Scott and Mary Williford-Shade
MATCH, Matchbox 1
May 30 & 31, 2025

As the last audience members found their seats in Matchbox 1, four women moved in individual, seemingly improvisational ways under (not in) a square of light against the stage left wall. Otherwise, the black and white theater space was bare save for a small black speaker, which was set upon a small black box. All the while, the sound of a metronome ticked from the speaker. When the audience was all assembled and the front door to the theater closed, the four women exited downstage right and the lights dimmed. 

When the lights returned, the women filed back in, with higher energy, taking a space on the performance space and began moving, again, what appeared to be improvisationally. They did not interact with or acknowledge each other. The metronome tick continued but now came from an overhead speaker. Eventually, two exited, then returned, then one exited—a rotation of exits and entrances ensued without clear prompts for them. The movements by the dancers were of similar quality, a lot of straight or slightly curved arms, carving space. Only one dancer (Mary Williford-Shade) ever went to the floor; the other three remained on their feet. 

This section went on for some time—the talkback after the performance revealed it was about 10 minutes. Even as the movement vocabulary expanded ever so slightly, the dancers remained disconnected, never acknowledging the presence of one another. 

Then there was a shift. There were almost duets, not unison movements, but echoes of movements. A pause, then a trio, a pause, then a solo—all without acknowledging each other. 

They exited and reentered with an orange plastic chair. An orange throw pillow was placed on it. Again, the stage emptied of performers. 

At some point, I didn’t notice when, the overhead metronome had stopped, but after the monologues, it started up again, as did the individual movement. Again, the dancers did not acknowledge one another. 

No one sat in the orange chair. 

The dancers turned to exit the upstage right door but one dancer (Andee Scott) stopped short of leaving. Two reentered, squeezing around Andee, the third, Mary, stopped to face Andee briefly before all four began moving again. This time, the dancers appeared to glance at one another, but only glances. I wasn’t sure if they were acknowledging each other now or watching for cues. It was subtle. It may have been neither. 

They exited again and returned with more set pieces: a potted palm, about four feet tall, one end of a stanchion, a sandbag as one finds backstage at a theater as a counterweight for a pully system or a scenery flat, and, finally, a piece of chrome covered something-or-other that might have been part of another stanchion or maybe a pipe—I could not place its offstage use myself. The pieces were placed with care around the stage, except not where another dancer wanted it. A comedy of moving the set pieces commenced, including moving the speaker and the black box it sat upon. 

An absurdist dialogue started up. “I’m here.” “You’re here.” “You’re there.” “I’m over here.” “I’m resting.” The simple statements expanded, describing their postures and positions until they entered a sort of cool, detached argument, eventually escalating to “I’m leaving” and such. 

They all left the stage only to return to move about again, detached, improvising again, until they started breaking into seemingly (I keep using words like this because they were so slick in execution and yet . . . ) improvised stream of consciousness monologues and fragments. They are hard to describe, as the rapid delivery made it hard to keep notes. I’ll just say it is some of the best absurdist theater I’ve seen in some time. For theater people, think of the most accessible Samuel Beckett works you’ve seen. Accessible because these were not so “out there” that they were detached from reality (indeed, they were often referencing the set pieces on the stage but in unexpected ways or giving them contexts we couldn’t have guessed), and the audience was laughing throughout so I know they were not lost in the absurdity. 

I have sometimes talked about there being “beginner” and “advanced” dance viewing. What I mean by these labels is that there is dance that is entertaining on the surface of it or easily interpreted, something someone might enjoy or “get” with little exposure or background to dance. Then there is the dance performance that may need some exposure to dance history and/or theory, maybe an understanding of what the Judson Dance Theater people were up to in the 1960s, or maybe how performance art and dance have fed each other over the decades. 

The Invitation Situation is somewhere in between or maybe neither. The first ten minutes might have baffled or tested some people, maybe caused some to ask if they were even watching dance. (Spoiler: They were.) But as the show progressed, the humor and especially the spoken word components would have engaged most audience members.

For that reason, it’s a shame that the audience capacity was so small for this show. It’s the type of performance I would like to invite more people to, with the hopes that their idea of what dance can be might be expanded, that their dance viewing might become more adventurous.