After Thursday night's performance of Heaven I sat with Spencer Moody and a small group of friends at Mecca and we traded thoughts on the collaboration between Low and Thorsen. Everyone agreed that the integration of musicians moving and dancers vocalizing was natural and seamless. More than that I was impressed by how empathetically involved the male musician, Sparhawk, was with the other performers on stage, and how clearly removed and sidelined the female musician, Parker, was- at times even 'taking a break' from the action on stage to catch up on some needlework.

Did you come see Heaven? Leave us a comment below if you were tickled, annoyed, moved to ecstasy, or otherwise affected by the show.

From Anne L:

Things that I liked a lot:
1. The huge audience. How often does the Mainstage sell out on a Thursday night? I hope OTB makes a lot of money from this format.

2. Tonya Lockyer running the post-performance Q & A. Her intelligence and insight almost seemed to be contagious.

I'm glad I didn't read anything about 'Alaska' before seeing it. I didn't know what to expect; I had no expectation or background or assumption. What I found was four people, not characters or dancers or performers, but people. They each felt the need to MOVE, vigorously and frantically. They moved with an incredible sense of control, and yet they all seemed out of control. There was no clear message, meaning, story, purpose, or throughline to what I saw onstage, even when the beautifully ethereal music (performed live) was added to the mix.

If we examine the darkness in us, where does it go? Does it inflame it? Does it release? Does it spread it around? Although melancholy hangs in the air, the darkness in Alaska is beautiful as it passes out of the bodies of the four dancers in the work. There is pain and there is pleasure, but this organic work gives us time to look and to see the heartache as it escapes. Dancers repeat movement with such commitment and fire that emotion burns through the space.

Diana Szeinblum comes to Seattle with Alaska, a dance theater work that is as heavy as it is light, as aggressive as it is quiet, as mysterious as it is ordinary. It is a lot of contradictory things. It's perhaps an illumination of the fragmented spaces that are in everyone's minds, silent one moment and thunderous, another. It's a beautiful work that's a lot like walking into someone's lonely room unseen and seeing thoughts that you probably weren't supposed to read, watching moments unfold that you probably have no business knowing.

It's the easiest thing in the world to talk about how talented Reggie Watts is, so let's just get that out of the way up front: you really get the impression that he can do anything on stage. One of the early vignettes in 'Transition' consists of Watts delivering "an soliloquy" [sic] in the classical style, and not only is the piece hilarious and deft in its send up of the tropes of the genre's writing and performance styles, but it convinces you that Watts could almost certainly step on stage with any Shakespearean company and own the room with integrity.

Likewise with the numerous songs in the show. The lyrics bounce between brilliant and funny (with regular overlap between the two), and have wicked beats and hooks. With just his voice, loop machine and tiny keyboard, Watts can stand-in for a rap super-group, an opera company, a jazz combo, or a worldbeat music festival, and the listener is no worse off for it. Plus, he can dance. And I don't just mean like he can get down - which he can - I mean he is a really excellent mover.

In the dance classes I teach, I often spend a lot of time talking about transitions. The way you get from one place to another is often more important than the arrival. The nature of the transition can give deeper meaning and impact to where you came from and where you end up. Without thinking about how you get from one place to another, you are just going through the motions. And what is true for dance is true for life. (Insert smirk right here.)

Reggie Watts and Tommy Smith have created an hour long unapologetic performance experience that strings together one transition moment after another. It is an interesting concept to take on in a time based art form and a ripe opportunity for thwarting audience expectation. From the beginning we are set up to believe one thing will happen, then something else completely unexpected occurs instead. One example of this that I cannot stop laughing about, is a video of Reggie making out with with a super hot girl in a car. The kissing is steamy and as a viewer you are really getting into the whole thing. Who doesn't enjoy watching two hot people making out like they are honestly enjoying themselves? Then bing! The Nabisco logo pops up in the corner and we move on to the next thing.

There are times I wish I was clever enough to understand the cleverness of other people. I feel this way at times when I witness something I like, but don’t quite fully understand, like Ingmar Bergman... or the Scottish.