notes from the Fringe

There are many things I like about the DC Fringe Festival. Toward the top of the list, DC needs more art, and definitely needs more weird, avant-garde, experimental art. The bohemia-meter reads dangerously low in this town, and the Fringe Festival makes a solid and welcome attempt at nudging it upwards. I like that they provide bits of neighborhood history in the festival booklet, and that they have recycling, and vegan wraps, and organic beer for sale. I like the phalanx of enthusiastic volunteers and staffers (ok, some disgruntled staffers in the mix too). And the ambition of the whole thing is kind of amazing, over 100 different performances in the run of the festival, from July 9-27. I’m also impressed with the new initiative that will run throughout the year, the Fringe Training Factory, led by DC treasure Anu Yadav and partnering the Fringe with the Sasha Bruce Youthwork. (Check out Anu’s latest project Classlines.)

Arriving from Gallery Place, I was freshly struck by how bizarre the whole area feels these days. We watched some young men of color being arrest while their friends fretted to the side, one making the universal ‘call me’ sign to his friend as he was being placed in the squad car. At the same time, tourists from Iowa and businessmen in suits shared the same patch of sidewalk. We hung out at the Gypsy Tent bar and got to catch a short but lovely set from Alien Tears. Walked over to the Apothecary to see the Weerd Sisters present Journey #8.

I do understand that Fringe often implies a certain level of disorganization and chaos, a lack of polish, and I’m down with that. Really. But I do not understand charging people $20 ($15 for the ticket, $5 for the mandatory Fringe button, plus an additional $3 if you bought your ticket online or on the phone ahead of time), to sit in an un-air-conditioned room in the middle of summer in which the theater performance going on next door was often louder than the work you had come to see. Loud male cussing from next door in the midst of an all-female ritual diminished the effect more than a little. I kept opening my mouth, like a fish, in a futile attempt to give any air in the room more opportunities to pass into my body. So it’s possible the work might have seemed more coherent without those distractions. As it was, I was puzzled for much of the show. How did the text connect with anything else in the evening? Why did one soloist have a beautiful, flowy dress and the next one was wearing jeans and a t-shirt? Why have a saxophone solo in the middle? Maybe what I was witnessing was actually a variety show, rather than the dance-theatre I was expecting? There were some evocative arm movements, particularly by dancer Regina Blake, and the live music provided by Lisa Buchsbaum added some interest, but mostly I was hot, bothered, and confused.

The Washington City Paper is a good resource to help you figure out how you might make the most of the Fringe, but I could use more assistance myself. Have you seen anything great this year, particularly in the dance offerings? Anything we should stay away from?