Music, Dance Reviews : Open Gate Theatre Offers ‘Night Spirit’

Bypassing the audience’s intellectual defenses in a sustained tour de force, Will Salmon’s “Night Spirit” made a disturbing and visceral impact Saturday in Alden Hall at the First Congregational Church in Pasadena.

Aided expertly by fellow Open Gate Theatre percussionist Alex Cline, Salmon achieved this goal rather quickly by making a horrific entrance down a dark corridor while emitting a crescendo of moans and howls, to take a dramatically lit Wild Man stance in a Gothic-arched door.

For the very few who have not kept up with Hollywood film effects, this was scary enough to last a lifetime.

In the course of the work, Salmon evoked early stages of human evolution as he used a long-limbed branch variously as weapon, toy, oar and eventually shepherd’s staff. But perhaps not the Good Shepherd’s. Salmon’s final blessing gesture toward the audience was ambiguous, only obliquely a sign and delivered with grim visage.

Cycles of fearful behavior leading to anger, aggression and once again fear, battered the viewer, as did the images of entombment and the struggle of birth.

Even when art made an appearance, with references to Nijinsky’s Faun, Salmon glossed the two-dimensional plastique with contorted, pained gestures. Elsewhere, he stalked, crouched, ran, jumped or made evocative bird-like arm gestures.

His deep howls and high yelps, his unsuccessful struggles to speak and later snatches of obscure (made-up) language emanated from his solar plexus and hit others in that sympathetic region.

Cline amplified and inspired Salmon’s movements and gestures with evocative percussion work, from eerie whines created by running a dowel around the rim of a metal bowl to the thunder-splitting alarms in a cadenza-like passage for drums and cymbals.

In all, a pre-verbal assault achieving mythic force.