Both performers, skilled in the art of butoh, committed to an array of shapes—less grotesque than praiseworthy—while moving within the confines of the baggy hoodies/bodysuits was all part of their animal kingdom-like thing. When a pile of gray dung dropped from above, the element of surprise was met with much-needed laughter. 

Talk of rhinos (thankfully, not RINOS—Republicans In Name Only) conjured the tusked beasts by dint of a pointed finger on forehead, albeit also wrinkly like their elephantine counterparts, with the couple’s trudging through a pile of crumpled paper making for some effective imagery. 

“What’re we gonna do now?” they posited in unison, before madly stuffing their attire with aforementioned paper, and moving on to tiny dolphin talk. Yes, the pair, themselves like proverbial fish out of water, had some quick thinking and nimble moving to deploy, all while bringing our attention to the desecration of the planet. 

Humor again came as the aforementioned vaquita was realized in the form of a fish on a stick. Held aloft by one of the prop-movers, it traversed the sun—a painted yellow ball backdrop—and provided a sort of relief, a remedy, to the current state of our world.

Remedy? Why not, as in this day and age, we’ll take what we can get. So, whether offering Seussian rhyming schemes or an inventive movement vocabulary, the Iova-Kogas’ cure, a transient one, to be sure, came in the form of their channeling an array of creatures, even, perhaps, Carlson herself. And if, as the title says, “These Are the Ones We Fell Among,” let us at least try to rise up and do our bit to save the planet, and, in the process, also rescue our zoological and ichthyological friends. 

For, without them, our world would be a far stranger and more inhospitable one, leaving us to wonder, “Who would we be?”