The Bonefloor

photo by Rick DiBello

Local dancer and choreographer Lani Fand Weissbach created "Anima," a 35-minute piece influenced by butoh, a Japanese avant-garde dance form. Veteran Erie musician Rick DiBello contributed "Carpenter," which looks at worker oppression from a unique point of view. Alethea Bodine and DiBello teamed up on "pRO_dUCT," a 25-minute piece which explores society's increasing dependency on computers and technology. Besides original music, it's also got mutants.

"I think all the pieces are not about being polished, like a lot of dance," said Weissbach, who has BA and MFA degrees in dance performance and choreography from the University of Hawaii and Arizona State. "There's a certain reality to the characters and performers. Hopefully, the audience will be transported to some extent. They'll say, 'This makes sense. I can connect to that. I can relate to it. There's some reality to it.'"

"Anima is a pretty raw piece," said Weissbach, who also operates the moving space dance studio with Bodine. "It's a very meditative and slow movement, but also really bursting and exploding with facial expressions or blank faces. So, it's pretty intense."

"It's very focused. When you're doing it right, the viewer is drawn in immediately. Everyone is functioning on a whole different plane. Time is suspended. Space is suspended. It draws from some traditional theatrical approaches -- the 'noh' theater and kabuiki -- but it's gone in a different realm and it's very improvisational."

Said Bodine: "The Western dance approach is from the outside in. But butoh is really a movement that starts from the inside on a cellular level and works its way out. It's kind of hard to get the hang of, but it's just coming from an entirely different place. "

Weissbach said "Anima" explores women's issues. "It's about women living in a male-dominated society and what they're subjected to or what they subject themselves to because of society pressures or what they feel they need to be," she said.

"Carpenter is kind of like an old Biblical tale, except the carpenter wasn't actually a carpenter. He was a dry waller," said DiBello. "It's about the horrors involved in being a laborer used by society and a backlash that could happen." A violent backlash, he said.

"It's a frightening piece. There's blood in there," said DiBello, who serves as the Roadhouse Theatre's sound designer and music director.

"pRO-duct is a take on the human condition and a technology-fueled media," said Bodine, a dancer and singer of 18 years. "How we're sort of bombarded constantly and how it affects us, our being, and how we view ourselves and our bodies. How we view ourselves spiritually and what role (technology) plays in society and where we fit in. It's very broad and it's very comical.

The Mutants, she said, add an edge to the work. They can improvise.

"They're not dancers, they're performers," said Bodine. "They do dance with me, but they're also expected to act and to improvise, so they bring that to the experience. That's why we love them so much. We really work well together. "