The Harvard Crimson

February 28, 2007

"Viewpoint" Provides New Perspective On Dance

By Rachel M. Green

The highlight of the event comes at the end of the first act with “The Shortest Day,” a piece by New York choreographer Scott Rink. The performance starts with an interpretation of a day at a typical workplace, emphasizing the office interactions that eventually lead to the “suicide” of Kevin Shee. Some of the characters in this theatrical story take getting used to, such as two women joined together by their hair and a moving, human desk-and-chair set upon which a dancer—Hannah S. Yohalem —sits and types on a typewriter.

           However, once the story is set and the real dancing begins, all reservations about this seemingly bizarre piece become utter amazement at both the ingenuity of the choreography and the flawlessness with which the dancers execute the extremely difficult and acrobatic moves.
With unbelievable strength and grace, the dancers flip over and walk on each other, creating the effect of a human jungle gym. In the style of “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, one dancer, Madelyn M. Ho, nimbly leaps up a mass human staircase and later navigates her way across the shoulders of her fellow dancers. A balletic fistfight between Shee and James C. Fuller is particularly riveting and displays the incredible talent of both young dancers.