I knew I’d be on my feet and craning my neck, but the reviews failed to mention jaw fatigue from constant droppage.
I had a free night in New York and was determined to get myself into something kooky. Where to begin? I came across Fuerza Bruta and must confess that I had my doubts about whether it was my type of show. The scant reviews I skimmed referred to a nightclub vibe, and well, to be honest . . . I can’t stand nightclubs. Or at least that’s what I thought. But as she’s known to do, Manhattan whispered in my ear. I listened.
Day of the show was a piece of work. My colleagues and I had been in a windowless room for eight straight hours with a client and without a break. It had been the sequel of a two-day creative binge where you try and give everything you’ve got and hope it was enough. It was exhausting, gratifying, emptying, fulfilling all at the same time. In the interim before the show, I unwound with my colleagues in a spent inertia. I had no idea I was heading into a crucible.
The show is general admission, standing room only in a generally featureless space that could be the Nirvana video without the bleachers. The lights went down and some drummers took the stage and set a tone for the event. The lighting was great, but it wasn’t anything I hadn’t seen before.
Everything after that was pretty much unlike anything I’d ever seen before.
Fuerza Bruta is a succulent flavor of performance art that doesn’t want a label, and I’m totally OK with that.
Our tendency to find the connection between an external narrative and one’s internal experience is the essence of the magic of story. In some cases, a good story can be like a wine with a long finish or a complex, aged scotch that causes one to quietly reflect on its rippled resonances. Fuerza Bruta is different. More like a mainline shot in the arm of something that would certainly get you arrested.
Fuerza Bruta. Brute Force. That’s all you get coming into this thing. I could find no story in the traditional sense, but the energy of the show allowed me to quickly tune into a loosely cohesive framework wherein I began to discover new layers of personal meaning.
One of the opening vignettes involves a man running on a treadmill wearing nice clothes. He’s running against the wind. This is happening about six feet away from me. Props, chairs, tables, the familiar trappings of life, are placed onto the treadmill and he must avoid them. Other people join him on the treadmill and pass him by. The same people pass him again. The same props. The same situations. Sameness. Struggle. Submission. Time is passing. This is life! This was my life. This is what life was for me before I made some rather large changes. I recognized this and identified with it in a visceral way that cut me to the bone.
It’s also very important to understand that this is one of the few scenes that occur at ground level. Almost every other scene takes place above the audience. When you forsake the treadmill, there is only up, but it may require you to exchange one type of struggle for another.
In another scene, performers are running and flipping sideways back and forth along the inside of a cylinder that has been temporarily constructed around the audience. Later, nubile performers slipped and slid through a pool of water hanging above the audience, sometimes suspended low enough so that you could connect, exchange a look, touch a hand through the surface. There are no words, but there is a powerful language of movement, a vocabulary of speed, friction, collision, balance, and it all made perfect sense to me.
And there are no breaks. The show is a continuous overdose of visuals, sound, personal movement, and audience engagement. Far from feeling overwhelmed though, I found myself in an ecstasy of euphoria that lasted the entire show.
Now, if you’ve read any of my other entries, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that I am no stranger to the dark side. I enjoy haunted attractions, and I specifically seek out shows where I can find myself in an intensity of that dark unknown from which true knowledge of self often bubbles up.
This just shouldn’t be my type of show, but it is. For me, Fuerza Bruta is a powerful expression of what happens when you stare into the blinding sun of possibility. It’s the courage of throwing yourself onto a path of uncertainty. The childlike joy of relearning everything you thought you knew. The ecstasy of soaring. It is a celebration of the choice to embrace the Brute Force of life and all its power and mystery rather than spending a lifetime trying to deny it.
I know I’ll be back. The show happened for me and made a difference. When I need a reminder of what it all might mean, I’ll know where to go.
The Memelab 