At The Home Show last Friday night, Abby Bender emerged out of the elevator of the Oak Bluffs Public Library, waded through the crowd with a trash bag clutched to her chest and headed down the stairs. Pausing halfway down, she looked up at the faces surrounding her.
“I love it when people follow me down the stairs,” she said.
Abby Bender and fellow dancers Leah Crosby and Danielle Doell beckoned the audience to follow them down and then back up the stairs, around and through the stacks, and into the chaotic world of their imagination.
Chaos is a word that dancer and choreographer Abby Bender embraces. She sees The Home Show as organized chaos, with dancers ricocheting from room to room, that eventually funnels into a tighter thematic vision. Ms. Bender collaborated on the choreography with Ms. Crosby and Ms. Doell.
“The idea of home is really important to all three of us in different ways.” said Ms. Bender. “Specifically re-rooting or uprooting. You could be living in a tent or the trunk of your car or could be moving from New York to Martha’s Vineyard.”
It’s a theme the dancers know well. Ms. Bender recently moved from Brooklyn, N.Y. to a campground cottage in Oak Bluffs, and Ms. Doell was moving off-Island the day after the last performance.
Ms. Crosby and Ms. Doell danced in each other’s pieces in college but didn’t become good friends until their reunion at The Yard years later.
“It’s a creative marriage,” Ms. Crosby said of their partnership. “But it’s an open marriage.”
Under the title of LanDforms, the duo has been performing together for a year and a half. Ms. Crosby and Ms. Doell are collaborating on an installation at The Yard as part of the A.R.T. on the Vine program in September.
Ms. Bender is also a veteran of the Vineyard dance community. Over 20 years ago, she started Built on Stilts, the multi-day dance festival that takes up residence in Union Chapel each August. This summer the festival will take place on August 10-12 and August 19-21.
The Home Show began as a piece performed this winter by Ms. Bender at Pathways Living Room Studio in Chilmark. She then brought the piece to Ms. Doell and Ms. Crosby and the three of them collaborated to create the final product.
“These two girls can dance me under the table,” Ms. Bender said about her co-creators.
The decision to perform the piece at the library came down to access.
“There are almost no traditional [dance] spaces on the Island,” said Ms. Bender. And none that were accessible on the trio’s budget. But the Oak Bluff Public Library welcomed them with open arms. “We felt like we could ask for anything,” Ms. Bender said.
At the beginning of the performance, after Ms. Bender coaxed the audience down the stairs, she picked up a microphone and started a monologue. The solo included quotes from female authors who have written about how women move and adapt throughout their lives. Books by Virginia Woolf, Emily Dickinson and others — none of them in current circulation — were spread out on the floor at Ms. Bender’s feet.
During the show, lightheartedness and gravity intertwined. After the crowd was ushered into the children’s room, the dancers removed their pantsuits and addressed a group of murals with a series of confessions, wearing not much more than underwear.
“I follow 24 cats on Instagram,” said Danielle.
“I don’t know where my father is buried,” said Leah.
Later in the show, the performers emerged from behind a door as matching Dorothys, wearing the classic blue gingham and braids. While the Wizard of Oz story often signifies a journey from lost to found, The Home Show also brought up the issue of the infantilization of women.
“Dorothy is a woman child,” said Ms. Bender. “She never grows up.”
The Dorothys at the Oak Bluffs Library were far from demure, though, as they tossed books, ran and jumped onto the stacks.
Towards the end of the performance, the Dorothys left a delighted audience behind as they threw open a library window and hopped into a parked car that was full of even more Dorothys.
Somewhere Over The Rainbow was just audible from the headphones of the library’s listening station as the car full of Dorothys drove off into the night.
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