Physicality Personified

Whim W’him’s Spring ‘26 closes its 16th season with a run at the Cornish Playhouse, featuring three new world premieres by James Gregg (LA), Rena Butler (Chicago), and Whim W’him director Olivier Wevers. The three choreographers push the boundaries of physicality, curating a night of moody, intense performances that challenges what the body is capable of.

The bass is already bumping a house techno fusion mix as the curtain lifts, revealing an ominous gray draped fabric above seven dancers, and Gregg’s Static Bloom begins. They stare directly into the audience before starting isometric head clicks with their upper body and a gallop-like gliding groove with their lower body. Traveling as one, they repeat these intricate and precise directional changes, athletic floorwork, and isolations with their arms kept by their sides. Their gray trench coats do a dance of their own in reaction to the fast-paced fusion of street styles, jazz, and contemporary movement vocabularies. One by one the dancers pump across the stage in a weighted, broken-down doll jazz walk, driving home the music and movement connection of this work. A solo performed by Owen Fulton changes the momentum of the piece: maneuvering through circular and rounded movements, he looks like cursive in motion, one long pen stroke that only stops for a brief moment to readjust and begin again. When the other dancers join him again, the energy seems to contain Fulton rather than project outwards to the audience like it did at the beginning of the piece. As the curtain descends, the six dancers surround Fulton with their faces covered, changing facings in a militaristic fashion, while vocalizing a bark-like sound. So much happens during this multi-layered piece that I’m left ruminating on the details long after the piece ends. 

A squat position, swiping arms, and rotating torsos. These are the energetic images that begin Black Moon. Adorned with black mesh fabric over their heads, the six dancers seamlessly transition in and out of group lifts that span the entire stage. One by one, the dancers remove their face coverings, some looking back at it as they leave it behind. Others move away from the fabric without a second thought. Choreographed by Rena Butler, this piece feels like the dancers are fighting between the covered and the uncovered. I wonder if this is similar to good and evil, right and wrong. Or if it’s not as black and white as that. Maybe there is a gray area, or overlap.  Lyrics of remembering and seeing (music by Jim Spencer, Mac Miller, and Parcels & Sky) fill the theater and intertwine with the dancers’ lingering eye contact and acrobatic freezes. The dancers cover their faces again with the fabric, this time helping one another to do so. Jacob Beasley is left on the stage alone with the fabric in hand in a spotlight that fills the entire stage. The lights begin to fade, and Beasley’s body stutters and skips like a scratched CD into the dark.

Dark Echoes Come Shining, choreographed by Wevers, is a layered exploration of contrasts. The moment Jemoni Powe and Yoshi Sanders begin their swaying duet, the movement becomes larger than life as their shadows dance across the concrete backdrop. Lighting designer Michael Mazzola incorporates front light and high diagonals to emphasize the play between light and dark throughout the piece. Costumed in all-white, the seven dancers fold and unfold through continuous lifts of both women and men, always moving with intention and care. The duet between Ashley Rivette and Owen Fulton takes center stage as the other dancers leave them alone. The mixture of the dream-like original composition by Philip Daniel and the elongated leg extensions, drags, and the daring hoisting of Rivette in the air reminds me of ice dance. The two dancers propel each other through space with confidence and assurance in the other. As they curl around the negative space of each other, I feel like the two become one before my eyes.

Whim W’him Spring ‘26 took place May 8-16,2026 at Cornish Playhouse. For program and information, visit whimwhim.org/program.