Care and Communion in a Place Called NOWhere

There’s a moment in Once Upon a Time in a Place Called NOWhere when a performer stares out into the audience and says, “There’s nothing wrong with you.” It lands like a thud and a balm—simultaneously disarming and comforting. This is one example of the vulnerability apparent in Keyes Wiley’s newest work with The NoGoodDoers, a deeply moving offering that blurs the line between performance and presence, stage and living room, artistic and everyday life. The seven performers start the piece by entering and creating a horseshoe around the stage’s perimeter, very close to and facing the audience. At first they are simply looking at us, then they begin to mimic the audience’s nervous tics and gestures—crossed legs, darting glances—turning us into choreographic material. It’s funny, a little awkward, and piercingly vulnerable. Our voyeurism flips into a surreal mirror game.

Set during a fictional game night gone cosmic, NOWhere doesn’t so much tell a story as it invites you to feel your way through an experience. The domestic set consists of a velvety forest green couch, a big wooden table, and purple dining room chairs. They’re all set on top of a large, light grey area rug that makes the living room pop against the black Marley floor and exposed walls of the mainstage Theatre at 12th Avenue Arts. This cozy set seems to be peppered with personal objects: well-read books on a little bookshelf, a cute embroidered mushroom accent pillow, leafy house plants in baskets, and decorative scarves all brighten up the space. The performers flow seamlessly from playing Rock, Paper, Scissors to full bodied solos before melting into the next group dance or game. The beautiful lighting design from Meg Fox and scenic design support and stage management from Maria Manness help the action flow smoothly. This game night morphs into something otherworldly—at one point the living room area rug flutters and rises up the upstage wall of the theater as if possessed. A keffiyeh draped across the couch throughout the entire piece becomes a quiet political whisper. 

The evening pulses with a dreamy rhythm—equal parts Twilight Zone and family reunion—where the domestic becomes uncanny and the stakes are definitely high. Wiley mentions in the program notes: “The NoGoodDoers will take to action preparing, questioning and playing games in an attempt to save the world.” Here, Connect Four and Jenga aren’t just board games, but metaphors for trust, vulnerability, and collective survival.

The ensemble—Ryan Rose Rubythroat Vinson-Jacobs, Lore Aschoff, Will Courtney, Emma Lawes, Olivia Anderson, dani tirrell, Nia-Amina Minor, and Wiley—moves with striking intimacy and quiet power. There is a delicate moment when the performers gracefully form a line to reach collaborator Aschoff. Aschoff has been spinning through the crowd like a star that has strayed from their constellation asking various people, “Will you be on my team? You can say no.” A slow dance unfolds in gestures of care and communion as the ensemble pulls Aschoff back into the family orbit, not with urgency but with methodical reverence. It’s not about winning—it’s about staying connected. 

Solo moments are equally as powerful. Minor’s back alone captivates in its movement as she begins a solo after one of the many group games. She initially faces away from the audience. The lighting shifts highlighting the many moving muscles of her dancing shoulders. She turns to face us but she shields her eyes like a curtain of refusal or tenderness. Anderson, after losing a heated game of Rock, Paper, Scissors, repeats the motion of raising her hand as if preparing to backhand or slap someone, but the hit never lands. This almost-slap becomes a meditation on restraint—where does deferred, violent energy go if not out into the world? Into the body? Into the space? Lawes also finds herself caught up in a solo that seems to grow from the exuberance of “winning” a game. She slices the air with her elbows and ends in a deep lunge that miraculously becomes a graceful high kick before you can ask how she got there. This work doesn’t answer questions—it asks them in movement, in rhythm, in rupture.

The soundscore is as emotionally layered as the dancing. Courtney and Minor lip sync to an epic family reunion-style line dance-esque version of Stevie Wonder’s “Pastime Paradise”. The line from the Lauryn Hill song Lost Ones “It’s funny how money change a situation” drifts repeatedly through the air like a visiting distant memory. Wiley’s sound design delivers a soundtrack that is not content to simply be consumed, but instead invites close listening and presence from the audience and the performers alike. 

What’s most moving about NOWhere is how it holds space for the messy, mundane, and miraculous parts of building real community. Not the expected structured versions of team building we engage in for jobs and networking, but the “real” kind: the late-night game nights, the silly fights, the improvised chaos of figuring it all out together. This isn’t utopia though—it’s a group of people with all their various talents and flaws and personality differences. As Wiley writes in the program, NOWhere began as a solo imagining a better Afrofuture, but it became a collective journey. That turn from “me” to “we” pulses through every scene. Towards the end of the piece tirrell and Wiley dance together upstage, almost outside the time signature of the rest of the piece, as though this dance is not for viewing but has emerged as a response to the relationship building that has taken place throughout the evening. 

Watching performance artists I’ve followed and collaborated with for over a decade (Courtney is a longtime collaborator of mine from interdisciplinary project Gender Tender and Minor and I danced together in choreographer Will Rawls’ piece Everlasting Stranger in 2021)—seeing their growth, their signature styles, their artistic evolution—is part of the gift of this performance. Instead of wallowing in nostalgia, Wiley has created a space for the audience to witness and celebrate the powerful vulnerability and skillful presence of this very earnest group of performers. Wiley’s choreographic voice continues to deepen, rooted in spontaneity, tenderness, and a distinctive ability to merge the abstract with the achingly real.

The performance ends not with a bang, but a blend: the audience and performers melt into a shared game of Jenga. During this moment a giant opaque white balloon appears from backstage and the audience begins to play a game that needs no instruction: “keep the balloon off the floor”. We are all so engrossed in the game, we hardly notice as the cast members seem to magically disappear, leaving one by one. No bows, just being. I left the theater wondering about my various communities: What games are we playing with each other and why? Whose rules are we playing by? And how might we change the playing field for the better, together?

Once Upon a Time in a Place Called NOWhere is a generous and quietly radical performance. It reminds us that community is not a product, but a practice—and sometimes, it starts with just showing up for game night. 

Once Upon a Time in a Place Called NOWhere by Keyes Wiley + The NoGoodDoers ran March 27 – April 5, 2025. Reviewed March 27, 2025. Presented by Velocity Dance Center at 12th AVE Arts: https://velocitydancecenter.org/events/once-upon-a-time/