But let’s take a moment to admire some of those components. The piece opened with the chanting of the suspiciously Freudian couplet: “Come home with me in the attic/there is variety you’ll see.” The lights came up slowly to reveal the cast dressed like they were somewhere in the first decade of Sesame Street’s existence. Gwendolyn Knapp wore rust-colored bellbottoms with her long blonde hair parted in the center. (Hair was key, every cast member had lots of it to toss around.) Justin Faircloth sported a bright purple turtleneck and a statement moustache. He looked a lot like Matthew Rhys in one of his goofier spy costumes on the period show The Americans. Wendell Gray II wore a velour track suit in an eggplant hue. 

Kidlike movements abounded. A good summary of “Optimistic Voices” would be: early Sesame Street episode in which the roles of the children were played by foul-mouthed adults. There is a lot of fun to be had with that concept, and the performers seemed to be having it. There were precarious piggyback drags. There was crawling, much of it sideways. Frequent butt scoots along that bright red, synthetic floor covering called to mind poopy pups. Most familiar to me were the pileups. Two or three people would frequently stack themselves on each other’s laps, sometimes facing each other, sometimes with extended legs. They struggled and tipped in these little piles in a sort of domination game—the kind that I have to referee several times a day at home. 

I also recognized when the dancers got stuck in spacey movement loops. Gray II started grooving his head and torso side to side and kept at it like he was in a trance at a techno rave—though that passage happened in silence. Faircloth started hopping in a circle in a bent over arabesque and had a hard time getting out of it. The cast often planted their feet and flung their arms side to side with terrific conviction and penetrating eye contact, as kids are wont to do.