Wild Space Dance Company’s By Accident and Necessity

A field of grass morphs slowly into a single reed, in images projected onto three giant screens aglow in a darkened warehouse. Ice gives way to water gives way to tangled budding branches. The transformations in Tom Bamberger’s videos are so slow and subtle that you’re not sure they’re happening at all.

The changes are more apparent when you look away, to Debra Loewen’s Wild Space dancers. and look back again. No grand gestures or acrobatics create momentum. Subtle movements, in keeping with the images. were repeated with a slight delay. The images and the dancing conspire to nearly stop time and heighten awareness of one’s own perception and processing of that perception. Bamberger and Loewen make you more aware of your own mind.

Wild Space dancers Michelle DiMeo, Angela Frederick, Javier Marchan, Monica Rodero, Dan Schuchart and Randy Talley and guests Lauren Hafner Addison, Yeng Vang-Strath, Joe Picalik, Caroline Roselin and the Milwaukee Ballet’s Yuki Clark seemed to share one consciousness. They worked together as a cohesive whole to create a piece with no real beginning and no end.

Sometimes several dances played out once in different areas areas of the vast space. By Accident feels more like an art installation than a dance concert. It was impossible to see everything at once, and that’s the idea. Audience members walked freely through the space; no two viewers could possibly have the same experience. Each person stitches his or her own sense of time and place into the work.

This isn’t an easy piece. Three hours of non-stop images and movement demand a lot from the audience. The reward lies not in the performance itself, but in what the performance makes you think about. If you can manage to turn off your Blackberry and ignore your ticking watch, you may be transported into timelessness.

By Accident and Necessity runs from 8 to 11 p.m. Jan. 29-30, at the Oregon Street Warehouse, 221 E. Oregon St.; enter through 235 Pittsburgh St. Tickets are $16 and $20, $12 for students and seniors. Visit the Wild Space website or call the company at 414-271-0712.

Click here to read Tom Strini preview story.