Mad Shak in “Ex/Body: wake, dam, steel”/Photo: Tim Black
It sounds strange to say that a person dancing could be perceived with something other than the eyes—like a parable or fairy tale in the vein of Roald Dahl. But anyone who has attended a performance by Molly Shanahan and her longstanding company Mad Shak knows that when she says—as she did in our recent interview—“Bodies are so much more than what is visually perceived,” she means not only that the vast interior world of individual experience is hidden from view, but that it also can be tapped, extruded and made legible to an audience through movement.
That level of mining sometimes happens on a geologic clock. Shanahan’s current project, “Ex/Body: strike, vibrate, shatter,” which plays October 21 and 22 at Studio5, has been in development for four years. Yes, this stretch was forced by pandemic lockdown, but the Mad Shakers made the most of the time, going ever deeper into a process that took trauma as a jumping-off point for movement exploration. Meeting on Zoom and working on material separately in their respective living rooms, Shanahan says they were “delving into some subterranean territory of, ‘How am I when I am truly by myself, but aware of observation within myself in this mundane, quotidian space of my own home?'”
The first iteration of “Ex/Body” (subtitled “wake, dam, steel”) was in 2019, precipitated by a PTSD diagnosis Shanahan said she is “quite open” about. “It really stunned and informed me. I felt like I was in touch with—in a very uncomfortable way—some incredible body wisdom.”
Shanahan makes it clear “Ex/Body” is not intended to be therapy or directly portray trauma. “Trauma is the research base but it does not define the work any more than PTSD defines the person,” she says. “It can be seen without that layer. The work is not trying to make a point, but it scratches another surface level of how do we see one another.”
“Strike, vibrate, shatter” is performed by longtime Mad Shak collaborators Kristina Fluty and Jeff Hancock, along with Diana Stewart, Detroit-based Maria DiMarzio and Jaicee Partridge, and Los Angeles-based Vaval Victor. Original music was composed—and developed over the same four-year span—by Zachery Meier. Shanahan says this iteration of “Ex/Body” unearths a new deep well of physical information. By probing the physio-emotional cracks, fissures and disassociations (however hairlike they may be in a professional dancer), Shanahan and company tease out new movement possibilities. “It’s literal,” Shanahan says of the title. “The vibration within. You don’t see it in the piece, but as a warm-up we vibrate the flesh to wake up parts of the body that aren’t so easily categorized as bone, muscle, skin. To reintegrate. The body is all sorts of things—it’s flesh that is both mine and unwieldy. And shattering of the perception that my body is what is perceived.”
If the body of a dancer is not the thing perceived in a dance performance, then what is? You’ll have to attend a Mad Shak show to experience it. It is unnamed, and comprised of the circulation of energy and the power of attention. Some of the bravest experimental performers attempt to conjure it, but few summon it in performance space as successfully as Shanahan and Mad Shak. “It must be like high-risk sports, like hang gliding,” she says. “Something that comes with tremendous ease and flow but also feels really dangerous to step into the first time.”
Molly Shanahan/Mad Shak’s “Ex/Body: strike, vibrate, shatter” at Studio5 Performing Arts Center, 1938 Dempster Street, Evanston. Saturday and Sunday, October 21 & 22 at 7:30pm. $35 general admission, $25 students and seniors. Tickets at studio5.dance/calendar.
