Mating dance theater: a study of sex appeal
According to that great sage Woody Allen, "Love is the answer, but while you are waiting for the answer, sex raises some pretty good questions."
Like, for instance: What constitutes sex appeal?
That is the question the Washington Ensemble Theatre is pondering in a new dance-theater piece opening at the Little Theatre tonight, under the direction of WET actor-director Marc Kenison.
The final show of WET's second season, "What is Sexy?," follows in the collectively devised footsteps of two prior shows by this generously gifted troupe of young-ish stage artists, who alternate works by such edgy, well-known writers as Adam Rapp and Sarah Kane with original fare.
The two earlier experiments that the group conducted in its tiny Capitol Hill show lab yielded mixed results.
In the well-meaning but muddled "Handcuff Girl Saves the World," the subject was superheroes and heroism in general.
In last winter's more compelling "Wonderful Life," the company contemplated the disappointments and rewards of facing the winter holidays in urban America.
"What is Sexy?" is about, well, sexual chemistry — as many different people define it, across cultural, age, gender, fetish, sexual preference and other divides.
Kenison says, "We cover a broad territory." And much of that terrain was plowed by WET's classically trained cast of actors, who conducted extensive interviews with total strangers about what turns them on.
They boldly queried shoppers at Victoria's Secret and Urban Outfitters and coffee sippers at Starbucks, and also contacted college professors and phone-sex workers.
"We were asking, when did they last feel sexy? Who do they think is sexy? What do they think is sexy about themselves?" reports Kenison, who first conceived the piece a few years ago, as a graduate student in University of Washington's Professional Actors Training Program.
The raw (and of course, wildly inconclusive) data were then melded into a script, which the director, a former professional dancer with the José Limón Dance Company, calls "more collage-oriented" than some of WET's work, and " highly choreographic."
Choreographic as in ... ? "I don't want to give anything away," he says with a laugh. "But we'll just say it's playful. And there's no full frontal nudity, but definitely adult content."
Of course, not all collectively cobbled-together theater pieces equal the sum of their parts. And delving into the risqué can be, y'know, risky.
But artistic risk-taking, says Kenison, keeps WET's founders jazzed and committed to their cozy "artistic home," as he calls it — even as some of the members, including actors Lathrop Walker and Jonathan Martin (both of whom are in "What Is Sexy?"), are finding regular work at larger Seattle theaters.
"We're all kind of giddy about completing our second season," Kenison declares. "We're continuing to do well, our work is deepening and we're not at each other's throats! We're having a really good time."
Misha Berson: mberson@seattletimes.com
"What Is Sexy?" opens tonight and runs Thursday-Monday through May 29, Little Theatre, 608 19th Ave. E., Seattle; $10-$15 (800-838-3006 or www.brownpapertickets.com).