Following Invisible Line’s Concerning Love on the Occasion of an Apocalypse and Vicki Fowler’s The Things I Need, Frenetic Theater will present Jaime Fruge’s Integration as part of its 2015 Artist Board program.
Integration is a multimedia dance project that explores the idea of social conformity and what happens to humanity when Earth as we know it no longer exists. The evening will present a visually stimulating environment that promises to capture the audience’s imagination through a world where humans no longer identify with individuality and conform to the larger social mass.
Integration opens with a glimpse into humanity’s potential future in a disavowed world depleted of all resources, and survival is not taken for granted. Laborers, religious fanatics, and beggars fill the stage as the remnants of a once thriving society, desperate and struggling to push on. The dancers move independently, yet, synchronously as a single breathing being each different and unique. Video projections depict an environment filled with dust and nothingness. Until one day when everything changes.
Part two of Integration begins with a devastated earth where individuality has countermanded. The choreography is militaristic and sharp depicts a drone-like atmosphere. Video projections transport Integration to another world, and the introduction of a mutating box is the vehement symbol of conformity. Despite the overpowering of the individual, one character has preserved her sense of self. Will she escape, or be forced to conform?