Lara Kramer
Tame

There is a moment of ecstatic abandon in Lara Kramer’s Tame. Two of the performers, Karina Iraola and Amélie Rajotte, move objects through the space, and this motion develops into revelrous dancing. As the other dancer onstage, Angie Cheng, joins them, the scene rapidly intensifies. Cheng’s enthusiasm modulates to rage, as she shoves Iraola onto a sofa, dashes objects across the stage, and screams viscerally. This sudden combustion just as quickly flickers out, and the piece returns to the dynamic it previously sustained: an ambulatory, almost sedate, slowness, both mesmerizing and disquieting. In a sense, this timbre is reflective of the work’s provocative title. A term loaded with associative baggage, Tame evokes enforced passivity, uncomfortable containment. The characters that inhabit the piece experience these constraints both conceptually and physically, on a stage overwhelmed with furniture, objects, and appliances.