4X4, Bluefoot Bar and Lounge, November 14th, 2006
Last Tuesday night I had the extraordinary good fortune to attend 4X4, presented by Sushi Performance and Visual Art at the Bluefoot Bar and Lounge in North Park (downtown San Diego).
This wildly thrilling rollercoaster ride was the second in a projected monthly series of 4X4 performance events at Bluefoot. More than 120 dance/theater/performance art fans crowded into Bluefoot’s back room. It was like a rave, but with structure. 
People were standing three deep at the edges of the room. I felt like I was at the Lapin Agile in Montmartre on a particularly busy night. Attention was rapt, everyone drinking in the vibrating shared energy between the performers and the audience. For me, this 4X4 evening was one of those life-affirming moments.
Eight acts were presented (I say “acts” because they weren’t all dance). In addition to the creativity, inventiveness, and showmanship each performer brought to the very small stage, the overriding quality was bravery. All performers need a healthy dose of courage, and yet performing on a four-foot by four-foot stage with audience members a mere two feet away (truly redefining up-close-and-personal) requires courage of a wholly new variety.
4X4 defines in-your-face performing. Exhilarating. Exciting. Intimate. Personal-in-the-extreme.
And, of course, there are the radical performance requirements and technical considerations of developing a piece capable of being done on such a micro-stage. There’s physical danger, too. The stage is narrow, with tight borders. There are no flies, no off-stage area. You’re on the stage, or you’re falling off the edge. All the performers succeeded beautifully in this way — everyone managed the space and made the extreme restrictions work. These were bravura performances.
Sadie Weinberg presented “Boxing the Female”, choreographed by Terry Wilson. “Boxing the Female” is a gorgeous, fully realized work, very much like a Chopin etude. But this was an etude on steroids — a very big statement on a very little stage. This jazzy piece, backed by a liquid, electronic score, ranged over a wide vocabulary of double contractions, high extensions, geometric sequences, and running-in-place. I was reminded of an apocalyptic “Run, Lola, Run”. Sadie utilized every inch of the available space, creating a superb three-dimensional dance.
Victoria Robertson presented pretty much a single-act multimedia show. She stepped onto the 4×4 stage dressed in a beautiful kimono, gracefully disheveled, and began to vocalize. Arpeggios, runs, octave shifts, throat-clearings, water-sipping — a typical early morning vocal warm-up for a professional singer. Vocalizing continued while Victoria put on her makeup. This was all very fun, and there was much more to come. She peeled off her robe, in a low-key striptease, revealing a stunning little red dress. Red, of course, is the color of Carmen, and that’s exactly what Victoria proceeded to sing. The famous Carmen aria. On a proscenium, in a full Carmen production, the character teases the men as she sings, caressing them with her scarf or shawl. Victoria gave us a full-on Carmen, flirting with the men lucky enough to be seated nearby. Very nearby. This was performance art of the highest order, presented on a teeny stage of the smallest order. Heroic. Magnificent.
Alicia Peterson was a beautiful blonde in a lavender cocktail dress. And, as the third act, she gave us an early demonstration of how to engage with an audience that is literally in the performer’s face. The dancer performed lovely, lyrical choreography, her character sensual yet wistful, a woman hopeful of connecting in a meaningful way with a new, as-yet-unmet man. This was an intimate performance in a very intimate setting, and succeeded with grace and tremendous courage.
The stunningly successful evening concluded with the suave, urbane, and uproariously funnly Renowned Choregrapher Correspondence course presented by George Willis. There was even a quasi-”checklist” handout so the audience could follow along and self-test their knowledge of tempo, lighting, and staging. Wonderful, witty satire.
I thank the Sushi Performance and Visual Art brain trust for cooking-up this wonderful event, and I particularly thank the owners of the Bluefoot Bar and Lounge for saying “yes” to Sushi and having the vision (and terrific business savvy) to host this brilliant series of performances.
I can’t wait for the next 4×4, which will be on December 12th.
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