The Underground River

One of the pieces that I truly fell in love with of Jane Comforts is The Underground River. The dance is a narrative about a girl who is in a coma. I watched a clip of Jane Comfort speaking about the piece and she was explaining how when the girl is deep within the coma her artistic light shines through, while when she is awakening she loses that inner artist. The whole piece is very theatrical which is something I found so interesting. It is a mixture of dance, puppetry, acting, and vocals. Within the dance they even move to voices which are suppose to be the girls parents trying to get her attention and help her out of the coma. You can see when the voices appear how stark, grounded, and heavy the movement gets compared to when she is in the coma. When she is in the coma she sings, dances, plays, and explores. The four dancers in the piece all represent the girl. In the clip of Jane Comfort that I saw, she was stating that she titled it “The Underground River” because from the outside the girl is merely in a coma, but on the inside its like an aquarium, full and enriched with a whimsical beauty. The movement went from heavy to light depending on which kind of moment of the story was being produced. There were many elements from the dancers literally singing, to acting out with a small puppet, to a broken umbrella that really gave this dance an individualistic feel. At the end the girl dies but the dancers keep dancing more beautifully than ever to represent the artistic imagination that is being set free that she would have lost had she woken from her coma. 

Jane Comfort is not merely a choreographer in the sense of placing movements upon dancers; she integrates so many wonderful art forms, from the vocal performance, to dance, to acting, to theatrical elements. Deborah Jowitt from The Village Voice stated, “Jane Comfort and rhythm go way back.” Here she is demonstrating that Comfort’s roots go way back to basic rhythmic elements and through that she is evolving modern dance into a completely different genre. I love and admire Jane Comforts motives and ideas behind her pieces.Such as in “The Underground River,” many are upset that the girl dies in the end, but what Jane saw was the beauty of artistic ability awakening. I love the way her mind perceives the world around and her own work. Jennifer Dunning from the New York Times stated, “Miss Comfort trained as an artist. She applies words and movement on the canvas of the stage space with dexterity, but with surprising unadventurousness.” I love this quote because it is true; Comfort placed just as much emphasis in the words and vocals than she did in the actual dancing and choreography. She was making her point in as many ways as possible. I understand what Dunning means when she says Comfort’s work is unadventurous because her work is more simplistic choreographically than other companies, yet her work can be powerful and unique. Her works are not just sheer jumps, but control and risk in what she is producing.