The dancers deftly move between this kind of contact partnering and unison work, all of it athletic. Lit by Jess Fialko their black apparel blended with the background leaving the flesh of their ankles, hands, and faces to glow. It was like watching LED lights blinking on and off as they interacted. 

In one well-timed bit, Ciancuilli points the mic onto the top of his head and we hear the song lyrics, “Raindrops keep falling on my head.” When he moves the mic away, his voice goes mute. He repeatedly moves and removes the mic to and from various body parts while the song hiccups. It had the effect of channel surfing on an old car radio.

With each successive sketch, a kind of narrative piles up. A terrible joke is introduced and we get our first experience of laughing when it isn’t funny. I chuckled at the absurdity of the setup and so did those around me. See, Gillen is saying, this is what I’m talking about. “Punch Line’s” theatrical moments are never static. In this case, three wooden stools appear, posted diagonally across the stage. The dancers hop on and over the stools, go upside down on the seat, toss them back and forth like circus jugglers, and audibly stomp the legs to the floor. The stools complicate the risk in quite a nice way. If I found myself jonesing for even more danger—that split-section possibility the dancers would crash that heightens the rush when it all works out—blame it on our cultural moment and the relentless disaster news media cycle. To know these dancers came within a hair of total collapse—saved in the micro blink of an eye—might give me hope for our real life prospects. Perhaps we could all benefit from the kind of training these Vim Vigor artists impart at University of Michigan where the Juilliard trained Gellen is an associate professor. Before founding Vim Vigor in 2015, she danced for Johannes Wieland at the Staatstheater Kassel in Germany. The contact partnering of “Punch Line” reminds me of aikido, where the assaulted uses the force of their attacker to redirect the energy. And the acting skill that is part of the training serves not only the theatrical moments, it enhances the expression of the dancing bodies.