This stark and shadowy work is dressed in second-skin black costumes, like
chic bathing suits, and bathed in warm blacks cut by strong shafts of light.
Unlike variously familiar Tharp dances, this one advances and recedes with
none of the wingspace maneuvering Tharp sometimes favors. The moves, first
for an evenly split male/female ensemble sixteen-strong, come with their own
tautly held and "boxed" or grounded energy. (At the time of its creation,
the choreographer was working closely with a boxing trainer.) The effect of
their movements and presence in the space is one of materializing and
disappearing into the void created by Tipton's strong lighting and the
stage's artfully arranged black velour surround. The first communal section
gives way to the second, star-turn segment, where a lone female dancer
(originally the choreographer, herself), packs the power of a punch and the
spring of prizefighters footwork and feints. This takes the shape of her
being variously engaged with five of the men from who accompany her as an
ensemble. The individual and distinctly performed partnering that results
from the lone woman's "connection" with each of the men exudes
extra-theatrical weight given the complete lack of such 'double work' in the
preceding section. The dance's final statement, another exit into the
distant dark void of a horizon, comes as "coup de theatre"; fresh shafts of
light beam forward as the departing woman simultaneously enters and exists.
She approaches inverse footlights, and, back to her public, exits the dark
dream of Fait Accompli by leaving her actual spectators as she were
approaching a realm of imaginary others.