Chinese Hoops from “Traces. Photos by Michael Meseke.
The whole point of seeing a live show is to experience something new, be it a different twist on an old familiar favorite or a piece of entertainment you just didn’t see coming. The latter was my experience with Traces, a Broadway show that puts more of an emphasis on spectacle than it does on narrative. And while people generally attend the theater for narrative, it’s not always a story that the audience craves. Sometimes we want just enough to remind us that we’re fragile human beings who are capable of extraordinary feats.
Traces is a hard show to describe. So much so that at the end, I looked to a friend of mine and said, “How the hell do you write about that?!” (He actually ended up referencing me in his article, as we were both confused.) It’s a piece of live visual art, in which colors and motions come to life in a way that seem to favor feeling over thought, putting a cast of young performers in the roles of actor, dancer, acrobat, musician and humanist. Moving from one set piece to another, each performer shares a brief reflection of their life, flitting through these moments and performing a series of circus-like stunts that literally take your breath away. The show, a product of the Montreal-based production company 7 Fingers, seems to borrow elements from Stomp as well as Cirque du Soleil’s numerous productions.
I’ve been reading other reviews of the show, which mention its heavy focus on urban environment and street performance. While I think that’s a fair assessment of the show, it also aspires to be a little more than performance art on sidewalks, incorporating elements of “parkour”, the act of vaulting over an object using one’s hands to project the body forward. (dictionary.com states that a practitioner of parkour is called a “traceur,” interestingly enough).
This is a show that’s a great deal of fun, lasting only an hour and a half and leaving you wanting more. While it’s not the strongest showcase of the TPAC 2012–13 season, it’s definitely worth seeing and following.
