In addition, Belaza’s deft use of lighting—or lack thereof—harkened back to the early days of cinema and the work of Thomas Edison and the Lumière Brothers. Combined with the constantly moving bodies, the notion of sensory—and sensual—satisfaction ruled. And, in keeping with the filmic aspect of the work, this viewer was reminded of the penultimate line uttered by Gloria Swanson/Norma Desmond in, “Sunset Boulevard: “[It’s] just us, and the cameras, and those wonderful people out there in the dark.”

Yes! There was a camaraderie sitting in the darkness of the theater, watching, inhaling, as it were, the breadth and depth of these talented humans as they gave us every inch of their beings, their gifts and Belaza’s unmitigated vision—while remaining—if one could actually see their faces—dispassionate as they carried on twirling, whirling, and moving from seemingly dim spotlights to even dimmer ones.

The performance actually felt like some sort of baptism, not by fire, but again, by unseen specters, as it challenged both our visual and auditory senses, with the sounds becoming more frenetic as the blackness became more pronounced. Was this some kind of hyperbaric chamber, a Michael Jackson-esque Propofol reverie, or were these dancers the physicalized rendering of a Rorschach test, blurry ink blots tapping into our psyches?

With their feet ever-planted on terra firma, the movers nevertheless managed to execute deep back bends, confounding our idea of reality. Yes, we marvel at a ballerina’s fouettés, her six o’clock extensions and sky-high jetés, but this—this—was something completely different. To the sounds of a chugging train (or not,) the movers carried on, those intermittent flashes of illumination giving them the air of, well, fireflies, or was it a cadre of performers exhibiting signs of OCD?