Meanwhile, life, in its various iterations, unspooled across the screens in the forms of humans—a cowboy, a film/television star, Natasha Lyonne, and other characters who repeat lines such as, “you can lose yourself in an instant”—animals, including P-22, the beloved mountain lion that used to prowl the Hollywood Hills until he was euthanized in 2022, since becoming a martyred star who was actually given his own memorial concert—and folks going about their business. If their business, that is, were in the Mohave desert, a robotics factory (evoking Charlie Chaplin’s classic, “Modern Times”), on L.A.’s ubiquitous freeways or lolling about a Hockney-esque swimming pool. 

So, how to compete with all of that? It was simple, really, as the dancers, garbed in funereal black t-shirts, cargo pants and sneakers (uncredited), whether deploying sinuous solos, as pairs moving in unison, or holding a pose in stasis—hello Courtney Conovan and Fernberger, resembling nothing less than a Greek frieze—these artists gave, perhaps, even more meaning to the film that is already a deep dive into existentialism. 

With Jeremy Coachman initially activating the space by nonchalantly riding a bicycle around the make-shift track, the images behind him continued unreeling. And against the tableaux of donuts cooking in hot oil before being topped off with colorful sprinkles, a burial ground of eroding 747 planes, the roiling waves of the Pacific, or horses’ hooves trodding through sand, the sextet of movers broke apart, came together and reconfigured their bodies like pop-up figures standing sentry while the world around them was/is in a state of crisis.

Choppers loomed, recalling the horrendous fires that swept through Los Angeles in January of this year, while dancers Lorrin Brubaker (it was great to see him recovered from an injury), and Fernberger created a visceral kind of push-pull portrait of unyielding strength. And strength is what these performers personified, clinging to each other as if to life itself, the surrealism of the film was juxtaposed with the very true bodies traversing the space in real time.

Elements of contact improvisation also yielded fascinating moments: Occasionally in synch with the film, but more often than not, a study of motion in and of itself, the dancers, including Hope Spears and Audrey Sides, offered a playful push-pull vocabulary, with nobody actually dominating the scenario.