Paint by Number

last Sunday (Sunday? Was it really that long ago already?) Ross and I hunkered down on low plank benches in the second row of a tiny black box theatre converted to white by miles of blank packing paper to view ten slender dancers fling paint at each other. Such a simple concept. Ten dancers. Ten gallons of paint. Lots of canvas space. Live music. I have rarely had so much fun at a performance!

Iona Contemporary Dance Company is a jewel of a dance troupe out here in Honolulu. Unfortunately, like many small independent companies, they lack the funding to put on many full productions and end up limiting themselves to being hired out to corporate events, fund raisers, parties and the like. But when they do manage a public performance...

Paint By Number
The show started with five of the company (all scantily clad in white cotton briefs or bikini/panty combos) sprawled out on the paper covered floor. The amount of white was almost blinding from the floor to the five white banner backdrops to the white underwear and powdered skin of the dancers. Five more dancers emerged painfully slowly from behind the banner, carrying silver buckets of tempura pant and hair coiffed into tight crazy braids punctuated with paint brushes.

Creeping, crawling, prowling and sneaking the five examined the five: poked, prodded, looked, smiling mischievously all the while. Slowly slipping from one prone victim to the next, gawking inquisitively to the throbbing electric jazz beat.

The paint itself started innocently enough. A dot on the palm...another on the wrist...gradually covering the entire right hand and forearm of their victims as the victims themselves slowly came to life. At the end of an hour and a half the floor, banners, dancers, and much of the front two rows of the audience were COMPLETELY coated in paint. The energy was astounding...and the spontaneous art that developed as paint was flung, brushed, splattered, caressed and dumped on...it was joyous. Youthful. We had sprung for the cheap seats, affectionately referred to as the splatter zone for a very specific reason. And fortunately so! During the show, not only were we occasionally hit with friendly fire, but the dancers handed off brushes for us to touch up areas they could not reach. And as the paint began to flow more freely and the dancers' bodies became the palettes...they crept over to the front rows and lifted paint off of themselves to paint the audience. The youthful and bald were prime targets...the unfortunate (or very fortunate) father seated next to us left the show donning a very colorful hand print atop his head.

I really wished we had caught the show early in the run as we discovered upon our arrival that photography was allowed. I would have loved to have seen it a second time around. And given the nature of paint and of improvisation, you can guarantee each performance was a unique work of art all its own.