Curating a Space of Care: a response by Lauren Sheely

Image captured by Angee Lennard

Scale

Choreographer: Maggie Bridger, with dancers

Dancers: Maggie Bridger, Jordan Brown, Joán Joel, Alex Neil-Sevier, Robby Lee Williams

Costumes and Visual Art: Reveca Torres

Sound Design: Shireen Hamza

Crafters: Margaret Fink, Sandy Guttman, Alison Kopit, Ashley Miller

May 13 + 14, 2023

High Concept Labs

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My experience of Maggie Bridger’s Scale began an hour or so before the performance’s scheduled start time. As I prepared to drive down to High Concept Labs, I realized that I was not carrying my typical low-grade anxiety that hovers in the background of every performance I attend: what if I need the bathroom?

I was familiar with the piece, and Bridger’s work generally, so I was clued in even before arriving that audience comfort and accessibility was central to the work. As a voracious theatergoer who also has been living with Crohn’s disease for two decades, I have an acute awareness of the small (for me) but highly possible chance of shame or worse, disaster, if I find myself in a performance space and suddenly need the bathroom. To begin the evening with the knowledge that I would have access to what I needed, whenever I needed it, and that I would be able to rejoin the performance in my own time, was liberating.

In her artist note, Bridger writes “Scale is an invitation for you, audience members, to attend to your embodied experience of the work.” This curation of comfort and accessibility was evident immediately upon arrival; the performance space at High Concept Labs was filled with traditional chairs, but also beanbags, yoga mats, pillows, and blankets. A table near the door held various access items, from ear defenders to fidget toys, and audience members were encouraged to find a space to get comfortable with any tools they might need for the performance. When I arrived about 10 minutes before the performance began, folks had settled in a variety of configurations, seemingly taking Bridger’s invitation to heart.

Tending to the audience’s embodied experience did not cease with the beginning of dance; instead, Bridger provided an overview of the whole piece up front, creating a roadmap for us to journey with her and her four dancers. She began the dance with an invitation for the audience to join the dancers in a brief score: find a comfortable position, and only move again when you are uncomfortable. The dancers began in stillness, and I watched as the audience struggled with this prompt. Should we focus on the dancers in their stillness? How do I tend to my own sensation while I am trying to absorb everything happening in the room? One audience member procured a blanket and laid down flat on the ground positioning themself behind a large column that obscured the view of the dancers, embracing the prompt in full.

The performance comprised several sections where the individual dancers explored their own relationships to pain. The costuming, by Reveca Torres, featured visible white stitching on the locations where each individual dancer experienced pain. While none of the dancers made explicit reference to the onset of their pain or specific diagnoses, their individual audio description coupled with their costumes allowed for a rich exploration of how pain is manifested, carried, and absorbed by their individual, unique bodies. This exploration focused primarily on physical pain, but also, in the case of dancer Joán Joel who is deaf, emotional and psychological pain inflicted by racism, ableism, and marginalization.

In one of the sharpest sections of the piece, the cast agrees to participate in a deep breathing activity modeled on one Bridger herself encountered while in the hospital recovering from surgery. We hear a voiceover, and gradually the soothing, monotone voice of the narrator becomes increasingly agitated as they begin to recognize the limitations of these pseudo-treatments and the healthcare system, marking the most pointedly critical moment of Scale.

Bridger’s focus on access and care for her audience extended to her dancers, as well. In one section of the piece, Bridger introduces a “comfort” phrase, a short snippet of dance composed of movements that bring her comfort and enjoyment. We see each of the other four dancers adapting this phrase for their own comfort, modifying the timing, size, speed, etc. of Bridger’s original movement. What emerges is a dance that is recognizable but individualized; for portions of the phrase, two dancers, Jordan Brown and Joel, held a conversation in sign language without any translation for the audience, while Alex Neil-Sevier performed Bridger’s alongside Bridger, but with shifts in momentum and direction. This resulted in a captivating mini-duet where Bridger and Neil-Sevier sometimes met up in perfect synchronization, only to fall out and continue in their own individualized mutations of the comfort phrase.

The piece concluded by addressing the pain scale head on, as each of the five dancers laid ten fabric facemasks on the ground in their own rough line; each mask was embroidered with a face depicting the range of pain from 1-10, from a cheery smile on one end to a deep frown with tears on the cheek at the other. The dancers took turns providing narration for each trip up and down the pain scale, interweaving personal narrative with medical notes (“the patient reports intense joint pain”) as the dancers slowly moved through space and layered on different masks representing different numbers on the pain scale. Robby Williams found beautiful fluidity as he wheeled through the masks, puncturing his graceful arm extensions with sharp tilts of his chair and torso to the floor, gut punches of pain interrupting and shifting but never stopping his dancing.

Scale began with a clear invitation to comfort and access for the audience, and then extended that same care to the dancers on stage. For a moment at the end of the piece, as the dancers leaned against one another on the far wall, they completed the semicircle of the audience ringed around the space on the chairs, mats, and blankets. We all shared a breath in our circle of stillness, our circle of care.

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Lauren Sheely (she/her) is a chronically ill dancemaker, teaching artist, and dramaturg from Chicago, IL. Her works centers on exploring the bodily manifestations of invisible illness and finding joy in all manners of movement. Lauren is a co-facilitator for the weekly Inclusive Dance Workshop series and a regular collaborator with Unfolding Disability Futures. She holds a BA in Theatre and Performance Studies from Grinnell College and an MA in Performance Studies from the University of Chicago.