Wendy Osserman Dance Company Presents COMBUSTION 

Wendy Osserman Dance Company presents the ardent Combustion at Theater For The New City, March 11-14, 2020. Fire is a recurrent image embodied by the dancers in Combustion, a new piece for five. As she attempts to digest inflammatory statements and actions by our President and his followers, Wendy Osserman - like many of us - has felt consumed with worry, shock, anger and a need to make sense of current events. President Trump appears caught in his reality TV role as he fires his collaborators and fumes and lashes out at any opposition. At the same time, we are witnessing the destructive power of wildfires in California and elsewhere in the world, self-combusting due to creeping climate change, deforestation, and poor working conditions in third-world countries.

As in past works, Osserman identifies with what concerns her - war, the depleted earth, polarization in politics, fascistic leaders - and physicalizes her response. As she performs her distress, humor can emerge as a welcome side effect, surprising and palliative. In her collaboration with the dancers, fire is also recognized as a generator of life, an agent of transformation, purification, illumination and enlightenment. The unusual contributions of composer, musician and musical instrument creator, Skip La Plante, will again delight the dancers and the audience.

Udjat, a trio from 1985, concludes the program with "a darkness that is both powerful and compelling," Attitude: The Dance Magazine. Udjat is the Egyptian hieroglyph of the Sacred Eye, a symbol of completeness, of things made more precious having been restored.

For tickets visit https://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/4502744. More information available at www.wodance.org.