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Two women, a bit of water, some filmy fabric and a dazzling soundscape turned the patio of Southwest School of Art & Craft into something magical last weekend as "Watermark, Part 1" unfolded under a drizzly, windy sky.
The work, created and performed by Jump-Start Performance Co.'s Sandy Dunn and S.T. Shimi, needs no more than a two-word review: See it!
"Watermark" is beautiful. The score by Paul Harford and Eric Chapelle is excitingly intriguing. With its plunky water sounds, lyrical passages and muted percussion, it is as one with the women as they perform their homage to water.
Entering the patio space for which the work was designed, the eye falls upon several things: a rectangle holding shallow water; a mass of slender, tangled metal; a bowl holding a mannequin's torso; a collection of water bottles arranged to form another rectangle; a galvanized tub resting on its side; a bucket or two; and, off to one side, two long hammocklike pieces of fabric.
There is no sign of the women even though the soundscape has begun with spoken text. But one's eye keeps returning to the long, still hammocks, certain that after a while the women will emerge from them. And they do.
But first they move within their individual cocoons, spreading the fabric to expose its sheerness and their shadowy, ever-changing forms. Have they been "born"? It's the first of things one wonders as the piece unfolds.
Like a poem, individual interpretation must come into play in this tribute to the beauty and power of water. The women are dressed in dark blue and green. They move serenely from task to task: They play with (and in) the rectangle of water; they repeatedly catch and manipulate each end of a large piece of fabric, first with benign gestures, eventually with a struggle for possession; they move apart, each doing something completely different, and one's eye is frustrated in the attempt to watch both women every moment.
Again and again, they come close and interact, sometimes mysteriously, sometimes describing with movements more obvious vignettes. The piece grows more beautiful as it progresses. Shimi's stunning bath scene, turned into perfection by Steve Bailey's lighting, remains in the mind, as does Dunn's entanglement in the massive nest of soft metal, one of the most imaginative and thought-provoking moments of the evening.
"Watermark" is filled with such gifts, all presented with grace of movement and in symbiotic union with the sounds and the night that one wanted it to go on for a long, long time. Unlike the poetry which it so resembles, it cannot be revisited as many times as one wishes.
After the trio of performances this weekend, we'll just have to wait for "Watermark, Part 2," and hope it's already brewing in the minds of Dunn and Shimi and Harford and Chapelle.
"Watermark, Part 1" can be seen at 8 p.m. Friday, Saturday and Sunday at the Southwest School of Art & Craft, Navarro Campus, 1201 Navarro St. Tickets cost $12. Call (210) 227-5867 for reservations.
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