When Barkin/Selissen Project took stage for opening night at Arts on Site in the East Village, they were an intentional contradiction. Stardust Gallery/Old Is New Again, which runs December 5th and 6th at 6:30 and 8:30 pm, is a performance that translates growing up into a piece of concise performance.
Over the course of 90 minutes, five dancers (Kyla Barkin, Aaron Selissen, Ellie Swainhart, Sue Ishige, Michael Bishop) took the audience through a lifetime as told through the mediums of music and dance. Their story began in a place of childlike apprehension. A game of ‘who likes who’ crackled beneath the surface. Bishop’s hand fixed across Swainhart’s mouth: a silent plea not to tell. Creative measures were taken to connect the uncertain Ishige and Bishop in duet. Selissen and Swainhart loomed close, watching as skilled, Puck-like wingmen while the music took the duet through an exuberant celebration of whimsy.
As their pas-de-deux ended, youth prevailed (as it so frequently does) and left no discernible resolution for Bishop and Ishige. The lovebirds moved on in life and focused on more important things, like their looks. A fashion show ensued, shoulders were bore most scandalously, and a frenzy of ego and social climbing pulled Selissen, Bishop, Ishige, and Swainhart into the inescapable foils of a popularity contest. By the end, pieces of clothing were shed and the players were left to face the wake of their calamity.
The following dances witnessed the aftermath of youth through an almost meditative lens. Moments of stillness were juxtaposed by surrounding chaos as co-founder Selissen knelt centerstage and Ishige and Bishop flowed around him. Swainhart peered past the audience’s fourth wall and into a liminal space seen only by her. Barkin appeared with her hands in her pockets.
“What do you want to do?” Barkin asked.
“I’m doing it.” Selissen responded.
The final duet weaved together music and the recording of true conversation as namesakes Kyla Barkin and Aaron Selissen simultaneously grieved and commemorated a shared adolescence of creative process which lead to their dance cohort. Their movements were short, cropped, and unsynchronized. Until they weren’t. They were water from the same source moving through different channels. Until they found one another again; and when they did eventually reconnect, the audience could breathe a sigh that was sixteen years in the making.
Although steeped with the weight of collective understanding, Stardust Gallery/Old Is New Again painted a loving and luminescent image into the genesis of artistic partnership.
