Since its 2009 premiere, Blush has toured nationally and internationally to the highest critical acclaim, and received the 2011 National Dance Project Touring Award.
At the beginning of the piece, all six dancers wear white paint on their hair and body, and through the intense 60-minute performance of unparalleled physicality and sensation, the paint eventually sweats and rubs off, the skin exposed beneath appearing flushed and rosy – a moment of raw blushing. As opposed to emotions of embarrassment and confusion that people often think of with the idea of blushing, the only blushing that surfaces in this evening-length work are the dancers’ skins, from the friction of contact. With influences from choreographer-artistic director Andrea Miller’s background in the Gaga technique through dancing with the Batsheva Dance Company, Miller has cultivated a group of splendid movers who fulfill an inventive, aggressive, and contemporary style, which investigates sexual desire, contentiousness, and loss.
The piece masterfully juxtaposes binaries such as pitting explosive and chaotic reorganizations of the body with formal clarity in choreography and staging. Much of the piece has the women dancing against the three men in oppositional unison patterns, all in the confines of an arena marked out on the floor with tape. Through the instinctive motion and experience of freedom and pleasure practice in Gaga, the dancers of Gallim Dance cross over into a realm that creates something bestial about them, as they move in packs and fling one another around. The connection and vulnerability that the dancers will themselves into requires a deep understanding of sensation and momentary experiential choices that are not often witnessed in choreographies of our generation. Gallim is a force that pushes the boundaries of movement experiences on the concert stage and is a force to be reckoned with in the contemporary dance scene of this generation.
