Vengel and Ernesto Peart Falcón hold a bright light between them, and in their shiftings from one clinging posture to another, the energy breaks through their bodies in a vector of sudden illumination, like the cosmos itself bursting open. As a rumble intensifies and the bodies begin to stretch, the image is thrillingly ambiguous, simultaneously calling to mind a young couple awakening in bed and an egg membrane stretching with the first instinctual, mysterious stirrings of life.

When the bodies suddenly break through the plastic, first sitting on the floor, then crawling sideways and tearing the plastic down, their clothing becomes discernible. Both are wearing translucent t-shirts and tights with leotard bottoms in the palest of pastels. Vengel has an open face, guileless, her thighs vulnerable as the tights rip; Falcón is a tall and solidly muscled dancer, Superman in soft hues. A persistent beeping like a medical device takes over as she cradles him and they collapse.

The morphings and grapplings that follow on the floor are so riveting as to tempt one to offer real-time description. Much of the movement is built on the two crawling over one another, but as they do so the intensity of their concentration never fades, and their positions achieve a strangely spectacular fascination: equally organic and unnatural. In one passage, vengel carries the rock across the stage; in another, the two suddenly flop belly down upon the ice and slide around the floor. Eventually Falcón slides his feet to the pile of dirt, pulling it towards himself with his toes (feet are as intentional as hands throughout this whole work). For anyone concerned about climate change, the resonances of this image are painfully relevant: all that ice crackling and cracking, followed by so much effort required just to ground one’s feet into the earth again. A primordial human tragedy in capsule.