New designs
Intersection's Hybrid Project travels through time.

By Rita Felciano

HYBRID CARS HAVE been newsworthy as of late, but a different type of environmentally friendly project has been in the works for years at Intersection for the Arts. Under the guidance of program director Sean San Jose, Intersection has developed the Hybrid Project, a laboratory designed to create new artistic vehicles. Grady Cousins, Erika Shuch, Tommy Shepherd, and Dan Wolf's 1984/2004: Time Passes Very Slowly is the latest Hybrid Project work to make a test run, and a recent performance (April 22) indicates it's on the right track.

More than simply fusing crafts – acting, singing, dancing, rapping – Cousins, Shuch, Shepherd, and Wolf wanted to find a common pool of experience into which they all could dip. About midway through 1984/2004, this commonality took the form of a circle of deep red light that appeared on the stage floor. Shuch warily approached the bloodlike pool of life, unsure if she should dive in. Eventually all four performers took the leap, convinced that "it's there, it's almost there." Ultimately, they were left with Shuch spinning a thread out of thin air, an image that also brought the show to a close.

The red light (Christopher Studley is responsible for lighting design) that alternately punctuated and flooded this intriguing piece also seemed to function as a beacon for insight. 1984/2004's distinct episodes often flowed smoothly into one another; at other times the performers threw in an aside – an effect akin to a punch line – that brought the audience back to a more pedestrian reality. In addition to inserting a note of humor, these abrupt cutoffs suggested that a particular moment or movement had been pushed as far as possible.

After a curtain-raising performance by six Hybrid Project students that proved this innovative undertaking trains good interdisciplinary artists (Grady Barker was particularly noteworthy), 1984/2004's quartet of black-clad performers seemed to emerge from nowhere, each carrying a chair. Though not exactly the most original props, the chairs proved to be effective, becoming prisons and refuges, functioning as weapons, and providing demarcations.

As its title suggests, 1984/2004 explored 20 years in a life. But whose – an individual's? a cultural movement's? a society's? The answers to these questions remained vague, but what the work lacked in thematic coherence it more than compensated for with episodes of striking impact. Perhaps the most memorable occurred right at the beginning, as the artists tried to recapture a moment of crisis. Shuch began the passage with the statement "I was 14 when I broke my mother's heart." The others pitched in with memory fragments, half-finished phrases, and awkward physical reactions. Out of this mix of rap, Kecak-influenced body percussion, rhythmic patterns, shouts, and whispers, something that was dark, subterranean, and all-encompassing emerged. More interesting than the specifics of any individual component was the sense that these performers were communicating on a new level.

In one episode, fear was passed on from Shuch to the others in a kind of relay race, accumulating force until it sent Shepherd reeling across the stage, unleashing a primal scream. During a section that found all four sitting on chairs, twitchily struggling against an uncontainable energy inside them, the opposite happened: the simplest of human gestures – touch – resulted in calm. Throughout 1984/2004 Shuch, as the only woman (and the least vocal of the four), came across as something of an outsider; too often she rearranged the furniture or slunk around the periphery as if delineating territory. However, when this tiny performer threw Shepherd – who is twice her size – against a wall, nobody could doubt her integral role in the process.

Considering that the Hybrid Project is a laboratory that tries to develop a new performance language, perhaps it's unsurprising that 1984/2004's verbal component – except when quasi-abstracted – was weakest. Elements of talk about "loving yourself" that eventually morphed into "loving everyone," even when reinforced with body-slamming intensity, just seemed too simpleminded. (No wonder the performers felt a need to introduce a note of irony into that particular section.) While 1984/2004 pushed each of these artists into an area they probably didn't know they could go to, the most remarkable one to watch was Cousins. His vocal performance, which included multiphonics and throat singing, was matched by an equally nuanced physical expressiveness.

'1984/2004: Time Passes Very Slowly' runs through Sat/1. Thurs.-Sat., 8 p.m., Intersection for the Arts, 446 Valencia, S.F. $9-$15 (Thurs., pay what you can). (415) 626-2787.