Yanira Castro: «Beacon»

In Yanira Castro’s Beacon, audience members file warily into the plexiglas and red curtained viewing booths which transform observers into witnesses, jurors, executioners, saviors. At first, the booths are lit so we see not the dancers but ourselves, reflected, before the lighting flips to the stage. We are in a drained swimming pool surrounded by the sturdy brick foundation, staircases, and niches of the former Brooklyn Bathhouse No. 7, nearly a century old. Pamela Vail, in a transparent overcoat, stands utterly alone – vulnerable and  abandoned, black mascara staining her cheek.

She poses tensely, balancing precariously on one knee; her leg in attitude ratchets around her body. Marya Wethers, Heather Olson, and Nancy Ellis, in black cutaway tails, form a Greek chorus. They skitter on fours, screaming silently. Coughs suggest succumbing to a gnawing, inexorable consumption. They strip off their coats revealing see-through tunics that make them seem unclothed. Vail, now naked, lunges straight at us – confrontationally, inches away. The players don’t respond to one another so much as move as different operatives of one mind. In a chilling moment, Ellis lies on her folded legs while ...