Review: BWAAD: But What About Asian Dudes? (TheMASSIVE)

Pile-driving premiere fills stage with jubilant motion

TheMASSIVE presents

BWAAD?

But What About Asian Dudes?: A Black Man’s Quest for Answers

Created and Directed by Kyle Vincent Terry at Stage 773, 1225 W. Belmont (map) through March 6  |  tickets: $25  |  more info

Reviewed by Lawrence Bommer

More performance piece than play, this 65-minute inaugural offering by TheMASSIVE (whatever that means) is an impressive outpouring of mainly unprocessed energy and unearned emotion. Dancing up a tempest and emphatically earnest, the seven dancers in Kyle Terry’s debut show kinetically pursue a vaguely political credo of “movements through movement.” The result is some pretty contagious passion.

Their musical inspiration, pumped in as they pump up, comes from Kanye West, Selda, David Holmes, Sam Cooke, Keith Papworth, Mos Def, Flying Lotus and Gil Scott Heron. Between the driven dance pieces are snippets from interviews about racial identity and how much labels determine legitimacy in love and work. (Sometimes these unfounded and unsourced generalizations about Asian men and white women sound gratuitous and, worse, glib.) The overlapping sound makes the text occasionally hard to hear but the frenzy on stage is eloquence itself. “BWAAD?” is about true and false expectations based on skin and often anchored in ignorance or hope.

With the credo that “we steal from each other,” Terry and his troupe launch into a gleeful frenzy of inspired borrowing, illustrated by pull-down illustrations. Jarrett Kelly incarnates longing in his solo to Cooke’s “Laughin’ and Clownin,” while the ensemble spoof the vacuity of white folks with the vapid “Sunshowers” from Dr. Buzzard’s Original Savannah Band. Cavorting with back and front flips, some wizard aerobic movement, and some well-coordinated breakout jubilation, this company is combustible. They may not mean all that much but, if motion were argument, they’d win all sixteen of these dance dialogues.

Rating: ★★★

 

• Kathryn Burrows-Big Rapids, MI
• Erin Clyne-Jacksonville, FL
• Jessica Deahr-Arlington Heights, IL
• Ricky Jamie-Miami, FL
• Jarrett Kelly-Chicago, IL
• Katy Kempen-Port Edward, WI
• Jennifer Zyrkowski-Schaumburg, IL

• Jesus Contreras
  Assistant Director
• Nicholas Matonich
  Lighting Designer
• Kyle Vincent Terry
  Sound Design, Video Editing
• Brittney Ortiz
  Costume Design

Creator/Director Kyle Vincent Terry