Knowledge may be power. But in Belladonna, a “Rappaccini’s Daughter”-inspired dance piece from Adam Barruch and Chelsea Bonosky, too much power can be toxic. Inspired by Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short story, in which a serious young scholar’s love for the titular daughter, Beatrice, is complicated by her propensity for promenading around a garden of poisonous plants (and taking on some of their more venomous characteristics), Belladonna strips down the saga into its fundamental dichotomies: civilization/nature, male/female, lover/beloved.
Stripped is an apt term, perhaps, given the structure of the afternoon at the 92nd Street Y. The Stripped/Undressed series is at once performance and presentation: over the first half of the performance, Barruch and Bonosky — clad in basic black rehearsal clothing — discuss their inspirations in making the piece, unpacking each gesture. They show us how a series of images — “snake,” “knowledge” — find their way into the vocabulary of movement: into a series of gestures that, ellided, start to form the backbone of a dance. It’s an illuminating and welcome part of the event as a whole: despite the seemingly primal nature of dance, its complex physical language doesn’t always translate for a spectator — and the Stripped portion of the afternoon allows for fascinating insight into how a piece like Belladonna comes to be.
The second half of the show, which features Belladonna ‘dressed’ in its entirety, was initially somewhat jarring, given the expectations engendered by Stripped/Dressed’s setup. Belladonna, with its minimalist appraoch to costume and lighting, often felt ‘”stripped” even as a fully-performed piece: a sense not ameliorated by the slightly awkward feel of the 92nd St Y’s upstairs stage. But both Bonosky and Barruch — consummate dancers capable of the greatest physical subtlety even in the most dramatic or ecstastic of throes — made the most of the space’s limitations: at one point, the pair jumps between the downstage ‘floor’ and the elevated stage proper: simultaneously opening up the playing space and creating an unsettling — and thrilling — feel of theatrical transgression.
If there is a weakness to Belladonna, it is in the lack of contrast between Barruch and Bonosky. For a piece so structured around dichotomies, Barruch and Bonosky appeared less as opposing forces and more as complementary ones: a directorial choice that made increasing sense as the two characters began to “merge” — a concept discussed in the opening presentation — but dissipated some of Belladonna’s potential early tension. Often, the most powerful moments in Belladonna were those moments of stillness: images (the opening and closing set-pieces among them, both of which are too striking to spoil) in which the difference between our two characters becomes all the clearer.
Still, Belladonna — with its eerie, viscerally arresting music and sensationally talented performers — proves an exciting reimagining of a classic tale. As part of the Stripped/Undressed series, it’s a valuable look into how one haunting story finds its feet.
