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Keisha Lalama is interim dean of Point Park University’s School of Theatre, Film and Animation. She’s also managing director of Downtown’s Pittsburgh Playhouse. But because Lalama is primarily known as a choreographer, it’s no surprise that “ASCEND,” the show she co-created for the Playhouse, is primarily a dance event, though of an unusually elaborate and immersive kind.
The show turns the Playhouse’s black-box theater into a multimedia playground designed to evoke the four elements of antiquity — earth, air, fire and water.
Up to 100 ticket holders at a time enter the empty theater, which as seen during a preview performance is dominated by a 10-foot-tall circular screen suspended above the floor at an angle, like a rakishly tilted halo. The projected video ranges from abstractions to representations of various natural phenomena. (The show’s creation process, documented on YouTube, included motion-capture avatar building.) A plinth-like stage stands below.
“ASCEND” feels something like a pageant or ceremony, as a troupe of six Point Park students embody, in succession, groups of characters representing each of the elements. (There are two rotating casts of performers.) Often they perform amidst the crowd, at times encouraging people to dance along.
The first six dancers are costumed like Elizabethan beetles, in carapace-like robes fashioned from fabric the color of rich soil and laced with metallic threads. Their sequence is underscored by ethereal prerecorded music composed, like the rest of the show’s score, by Ryan McMasters.
“Fire” follows, with masked dancers mounting the stage to snap, gyrate and flow like flames. Dancers on stilts, fabulously costumed as trees, do a sort of tribal dance, complete with live drumming. Water dancers take their turn, followed by an aerialist who performs a hypnotic solo on a corkscrew-like apparatus suspended from the rafters.
There’s more to the 50-minute show, including a nod to British artist John Tenniel’s iconic Victorian-era illustrations for “Alice in Wonderland.”
In a pre-show talk, Lalama said “ASCEND” was eight years in the making with her two now-adult sons, Jacob John White and Jaxon White, credited with her as co-creators and co-writers. At times it feels a little Cirque du Soleil, were you to be invited onstage for an act or two.
“ASCEND” continues with performances Thursdays through Sundays through May 18.
