SUMMER HOUSE – Oberon's Glade

Above: Reed Luplau of the Lar Lubovitch Dance Company in a guest appearance with Lydia Johnson Dance @ Peridance. Photo by Kokyat.

Haunting and unique, Lydia Johnson’s SUMMER HOUSE is set to chamber works by Philip Glass. In this dreamlike piece, a man and three women recall a period of time spent together in a small Summer cottage far from the world’s hustle and bustle. There is no set narrative, and we do not know who these people are or how they came to be in the same space at the same time. Cross-currents of desire, despair and jealousy weave thru the dance though we can never be sure whose point of view we’re experiencing at a given moment. Thus SUMMER HOUSE leaves much to the imagination of the viewer, and for me – who once spent a marvelous summer in an old Victorian house on Cape Cod – it stirs up all sorts of memories.

Reed Luplau gives a deeply poetic performance in SUMMER HOUSE. Though he interacts with each of the three women, there’s no way of telling where his heart lies; it may in fact lie elsewhere altogether. Reed uses his entire body as an expressive instrument, keeping the physicality of the movement ever-flowing and with his beautiful face illuminated by the emotional colours of the music.

The three women dancing in SUMMER HOUSE – Laura DiOrio, Lisa Iannacito McBride and Jessica Sand – are steeped in Lydia Johnson’s style. Maintaining the mystique that surrounds the piece, we do not know if the girls are sisters, longtime friends or simply strangers who have come together for a brief span of time. Though each relates to the male character individually, there’s also an undeniable bond between the three of them. Thus another layer of enigmas wraps itself around the SUMMER HOUSE. The questions remain unanswered as the lights fade at the end.

Here are some of Kokyat’s images from SUMMER HOUSE: