Review of “Are We There Yet, Baby?”
A dance-theatre production directed and choreographed by Pei-Ling Kao
Performed at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa’s Kennedy Theatre
October 20-22, 27, and 29, 2023
By Dr. Mike Poblete
Six individuals wake up in a strange landscape featuring three flesh-colored mounds. They begin to move, stretching and exploring with their bodies, finding one another, and they begin responding to each other’s physicalities with curiosity and tenderness, perhaps learning together what it means to be human. So begins Are We There Yet, Baby?, a newly devised dance-theatre performance directed and choreographed by Pei-Ling Kao, running now through October 29th at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa’s Kennedy Theatre. The show interrogates traditional assumptions about gender in society by presenting an imagined non-binary world where individuals are free to be in their own bodies. This is accomplished through a wide variety of performances in both content and form, including personal stories, live video, a drag pageant, a rave, an academic lecture on the connections between gender, land, and body, and dance inspired by ballet, contemporary dance, and the movement of two-spirit gender.
The piece is largely inspired by Vaslav Nijinsky’s 1912 controversial ballet Afternoon of a Faun, a celebration of sexuality and freedom, and those touches of graceful movement, abandon, and sensuality are present throughout this production. Devising, a collective theatrical storytelling methodology, often seeks to convey presence on stage instead of dramatic representation, this is accomplished in this show a number of ways. A drag pageant featuring all genders in sequins vogueing in their respective drag houses is an homage to the bravery of the queer pioneers who broke down gender barriers, but it is also a very real live drag performance, perhaps the first for some audience members. Several confess their physical defects, exposed moments from family vacations, details of self-care, and questions about the physical remains of ancestors. From the charming rough edges around these deliveries, it is clear that these actors are performing their own personal stories, in a group act of defiance, camaraderie, and vulnerability.
The most impactful moment for me is in which the performers move in ballet-inspired sequences in nude bodysuits with streaks and splotches of bright colors to convey the sameness of humans who are not separated by gender, and yet also the uniqueness of each individual. In so doing, at least from my interpretation, I briefly experienced a pre-colonial Hawaii depicting the relationship between the Kānaka Maoli and the ʻāina. This is perhaps what separates Are We There Yet, Baby? from other devised work I have encountered, that the vision of a Utopic non-binary world is not only in opposition to Western society, but rather, it draws upon indigenous knowledge frameworks to consider how we, as humans, once were and could be again.
There is a lot of technical proficiency from the show’s twenty-four performers, most of all from Kao herself, who performs alone in a silent piece engaging with a piece of rope that seems to simultaneously serve as shackles, an embrace, and as an extension of her body. It is clear that Kao earns exactitude from her dancers, but she also casts from a wide variety of dancing abilities, celebrating the imperfections of the human body as well as its potential for mesmeric control. To this end, a wide variety of artists, both on stage and off, contributed to this show. The program names Cuauhtémoc Peranda, a Mescalero Apache, Mexika-Chichimeca/Cano and “cihuaiolo butch queen” who claims to invoke trans*gressive/queer rituals and intertribal dance exchanges to provoke collective healing. Ariel Wessendorf, a transgender composer, provides a pulsing, ambient score in an exploration of the musical relationships between distortion, escapism, and queer empowerment. Kalikopuanoheaokalani Aiu, a māhū/bakla performer and kiaʻi ʻāina (land protector), provides a Hawaiian, indigenous understanding of gender, returning audiences to an understanding of dance as dialogue, medicine, and a story-telling landscape.
Did all of the nuance of these diverse cultural references come through to me? No, as a haole from the continental United States with no dance experience, I lacked the knowledge to receive and contextualize everything I was seeing and hearing. As with much of devised theatre, audiences seeking drama with a clear narrative may be confused – Are We There Yet, Baby?, true to its complex subject matter, is not so straightforward in its storytelling – rather, it offers many different moments from various perspectives form to create a mosaic of individual truths. The show invited me to turn my brain off, to relax, to connect with the moments that resonated with me, and let the rest envelop me like a warm hug from that impossibly cool person you danced with for a moment at a party all those years ago who you never forgot. Most of all, it allowed me to engage in a world of freedom that celebrates all people, if only briefly, and I found that world to be breathtaking.