Urban Scuba

Philadelphia Inquirer, Philly.com

The Arts

Posted on Thu, Sep. 3, 2009

Urban Scuba Who doesn't love the smell aquatic? You get plenty of it in the long-unused, now-funky pool at the Gershman Y with dancer/choreographer/wild man Brian Sanders.

In the Wednesday night preview of his show, Urban Scuba, Sanders set risers in the shallow end of the pool for the audience, and he set himself, John Luna, and William Robinson in two to three feet of water in the deep end, behind an elephantine shower curtain. The billowing plastic danced around as if in a squall before Sanders ripped it down to reveal a walkway across the water.

Men in harnesses look as sexy as women in garter belts, but these three also wore top hats and tails over their long underwear and looked trés Dada. As they swung through the air on bungees, the lovely Lesya Popil appeared at the far end in a goddess gown by Sara McCorriston.

She was soon ungowned and underwater, with the guys dodging air-filled trash bags. Slipping into the bags, the men transmogrified into seal-like creatures dragging their hind legs. The corners of the bags rose like shark fins when they swam. Did they plan that?

If there was a coherent arc in this murkily beautiful work, it was Sanders' kinky inventiveness. Is there no end to it? Let us pray not. - Merilyn Jackson