Behind the Scenes with Inbal Pinto

“Life is like a snow globe—often it is prettiest after it’s been turned upside-down” —Unknown

Shake It Up
by Austin Buchholtz

What is life like in a snow globe? For Inbal Pinto Dance Company, it is a swirling, dream-like burlesque with a man in a pinstripe suit, his dutiful wife, a handful of long-haired maidens in white, a handful of mini-umbrellas, three tiny moving houses, faceless human-like figures in formfitting multi-colored body suits, and snow.

In their unique dance-theater work called Shaker, beginning with the sound of winter wind and the serene sadness of clarinet and recorder, choreographers Inbal Pinto and Avshalom Pollak take us on a tour of their deftly crafted micro-cosmos.

Everyday gestures, such as the wife pouring her husband tea, are always trumped by straight-faced absurdity. In one sequence, the wife leaves her tea tray atop the unmoving soles of a maiden dancer’s feet while on her back, legs together and in the air. Contributing to the dadaist atmosphere, the dancers use as primary entrances and exits the little doors in the dog-house size houses. Able feet and sweeping hair activate the snow, kicking up soft lines. The most memorable exchange for me involves one of the body-suited figures leading by the hair—the most intimate appendage—two young ladies through an intricate system of rotations and underarm turns: gentle play on the edge of taboo.

Would you like some tea?

Afterward, I speak with audience members who were astonished and delighted by the use of hair as a fifth limb for partnering turns or leading the dancers around, so I ask Avshalom himself about that.

Avshalom: “When we created the piece we never thought about the use of hair as something violent or aggressive, we were thinking more about the poetic use and look of it and the playful use. Still, working with hair that attached to a head in the studio can create a painful misunderstandings...and leftovers mixing with the styrofoam.”

Dancing with hair.

Yes, the snow is indeed packing styrofoam beads, that static cling nightmare. Paul King pours some out of his red shoes to prove it to me. The beads are unpacked from 16 large boxes for the tour, much to the comical exasperation of stage managers. In fact, Schnitzer stage hands preventatively sprayed Static Guard everywhere, according to White Bird Technical Coordinator Kayla Scrivner, with little effect.

Since I could not make it to the welcome dinner, I ask the staff for gossip. I find out that when the company last performed in Portland, the daughter of White Bird Board member Ivan Gold met the love of her life at the welcome dinner in their home—an Inbal Pinto Dance Company member! Small world.

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Austin Buchholtz is a graphic designer, writer, and certified instructor of ballroom and latin dance. Austin was White Bird's Director of Audience Services from August 2001 to December 2003.