Dance Nation: An Exploration & Celebration of the Ferocity of Tweens

I have seen some discussion on the social medias recently about feeling truly shocked in the theatre as an audience member. I think often when we think of being surprised or caught off guard, we think of it in terms of the narrative- that there will be a twist in the story that we didn’t see coming. The arc of Dance Nation by Clare Barron, which plays at Alderney Landing Theatre until May 26, 2024, followed the story I was expecting, having chatted with director Laura Vingoe-Cram, choreographer Abady Alzahrani, and Riel Reddick-Stevens, who plays Zuzu, but there were several moments in this play that were absolutely out of left field unexpected to me, and I did feel rapt in a way that felt deeper and more exciting because I could never get a firm handle on Barron’s voice. In every moment between the narrative I never knew what these characters were going to say or do next. 

The story follows a competitive dance team made up of seven thirteen year old dancers, their dance teacher, and their moms, as they work toward qualifying for Nationals. All seven dancers are played by adult actors. Vingoe-Cram told me that the adults here are being haunted by the ghosts of their teenaged selves, but to me it seemed as though it could go both ways, that the audience could also be watching these teenagers be haunted by the pall of their future selves. Maybe we are seeing the children through the eyes of Dance Teacher Pat, who has already decided for himself what each one will grow up to be and, as Zuzu’s mother alludes to, this goes on to shape their destinies. 

The play, written by American playwright Clare Barron, was shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize, it is very meticulously crafted, but it feels often like it was written by a teenager. This isn’t a play that creates sleek HBO versions of what we wish we had really been like as teenagers, and it certainly isn’t a play that is naive or infantilizing in regards to being thirteen. It’s a play that is very raw and ruthless in its honesty of both how beautiful and messy this deeply confusing and hormonal time in a child’s life can be, but also how blatantly weird, random, chaotic, and deeply cringe this age is in a way that is always bursting with everything all the time: sparkles and horses and sugar to then eating babies in the hellmouth while amputating your own leg… just for damn kicks. Most of the girls don’t have any filters: they say anything and everything that pops into their heads. They ask each other deeply personal questions without batting an eyelash. They often have terrible judgement, and it feels awkward, even in watching this being portrayed by fully grownup women, watching them exploring their bourgeoning sexuality, in ways that feel both very feminist and then concerning or problematic, and sometimes both at once or in between. 

Parts of the projection design by Aaron Collier reminded me of the palette of a 1990s school folder cover targeted to tweens, which felt iconic to me, but also at times the projections help to set us in various locations around Ohio: in a car driving at night, looking into a bedroom, the dance competition venues, and the dance studio, but none of these are presented with absolute realism, they conjure up how they might be perceived by a young person, or maybe how a young person might draw them themselves. 

The play works so well because the actors all give extraordinary performances. It is interesting to see the dance aspect through the lens of the older bodies, but most of the time I felt like their real ages completely melted away, and they were all just thirteen year olds. Sharleen Kalayil plays Connie, the kid who everyone likes but sort of tends to fade into the background. Kyle Gillis plays Luke, who is both annoyed and embarrassed to be treated as just one of the girls, but who also seems to enjoy the privileges that proximity brings in his friendship with Zuzu. Lily Falk plays Sophia, full of unbridled creative energy, still very much a kid who wants to have fun and not take anything too seriously. Mauralea Austin plays Maeve the very imaginative kind of weird kid who is very secure in herself. Kirsten Alter plays Ashlee, who has a deep well of rage, but doesn’t know why, and tries to repress it, only letting it out in absolute random torrents of spiralling and intensifying ferocity inside her own head. Jade Douris-O’Hara plays Amina, naturally gifted and hardworking, who doesn’t know how to be the teacher’s pet and also someone that her peers actually want to hang around with. And Zuzu, played by Riel Reddick-Stevens, who has wanted to be a dancer since she was two years old, who is dealing with so much more than just the pressures of Nationals at home, but whose focus, nonetheless, is on consistently performing at the same level as Amina. Richie Wilcox plays Dance Teacher Pat, a nightmare in a tracksuit, and Samantha Wilson plays a myriad of different Dance Moms, who really run the gamut of what I’m sure are textbook parental behaviours within the competitive dance culture. 

The play also touches on tokenism in the Arts in the way that Dance Teacher Pat assumes any story is his to tell, which teaches the white girls that any part is theirs to play if they “earn” it, but also shows how even within casting “appropriately,” the work can still be deeply problematic and even offensive if the teacher is just ticking boxes or lazily trying to cover his own ass. 

How can you really and truly be friends with someone when you are both competing for the same one starring role, the same extremely limited opportunities, when every single thing about you: your talent, your work ethic, and your physical body, is being compared to each other? How do you have a hope in hell of still liking one another in this context? What is worth sacrificing for your dreams? Is giving up always failure? Is the real treasure, actually, the friends we met along the way? 

Laura Vingoe-Cram makes some really interesting use of depth and levels on the stage, which at times gives the story an almost filmic quality, The direction mirrors the chaotic and frenetic style of the script: doing the unexpected thing, keeping the audience a bit off kilter, giving us too much to look at, so it’s impossible to catch every single nuance from every single actor. While the set design is more symbolic, Abady Alzahrani’s choreography roots the dance sequences in the realism we need to believe that these children were members of an elite dance team in their hometowns as teenagers, and that at the centre of these wacky memories they have from that time, are Dance Teacher Pat’s opuses that they truly believed might be the gateway to stardom for one or all of them. 

There is something feral in the teenagers in Dance Nation, celebratory- unapologetically, feral that I have never seen depicted in quite this way before. It is both true and not true, recognizable and eerie, empowering and troubling. It is the chaotic energy of the 55 person cast of the Middle School’s production of The Music Man bursting into Smitty’s after Closing Night, where everyone is high but entirely on their own naturally occurring endorphins and dopamine. It is the chaotic energy of 2:00AM at the slumber party and you’re playing truth or dare and suddenly you end up running through your friends’ neighbourhood barefoot and in your pyjamas. It’s the chaotic energy of being in eighth grade and having a crush on a university student and not being able to see anything remotely inappropriate about you calling his house while at said sleepover.

It is all that lawless mayhem while also feeling like your team winning the dance competition is the most important thing that has ever happened in the history of the universe, and having a Dance Teacher Pat who affirms for you that your perception is correct. 

Eat. Sleep. Dance.

Keep Good (Theatre) Company and Heist’s production of Dance Nation by Clare Barron plays at Alderney Landing Theatre (2 Ochterloney Street, Dartmouth) from May 22nd to May 26th, 2024. Shows are at 7:30 Wednesday to Saturday with 2:00pm shows on Saturday and Sunday. Tickets are available on a sliding scale ($20, $30, $40) at this link.