Portland's Do Jump! pursues happiness with lightness
Maybe it’s “Divided We Fall,” the legs-akimbo travesty of a sight gag on “The Nutcracker,” that finally lifts you off.
Maybe it’s the distilled aerial beauty of Shersten Finley sweeping through space in “Winter Sky,” or the capoiera hijinks of Yoji Hall and Nicolo Kerrwald, or Tony Palomino tap-dancing breezily on a wooden box, busking for bucks in his open hat. Maybe it hits you even before the show begins, as you’re listening to the invigorating bleats and blats of Klezmocracy, the versatile three-man house band.
At some point in Do Jump!’s new show “Greatest Hits for the Holidays” you’re likely to observe that you’ve become unmoored, floating giddily above yourself. And chances are, you’ll make that delightful discovery sooner rather than later.
Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, the Declaration of Independence assures us, are our unalienable rights. The order makes sense. First, the right to live. Next, the right to live freely. Then, the right to live fully: richly, if not rich.
Robin Lane has been pursuing happiness for a third of a century with Do Jump!, and there’s not a scintilla of doubt that she’s made Portland a happier place to be. Do Jump! is the city’s prime artistic practitioner of a liberating lightness of being, a giddy weightlessness that is explained only partly by the fact that its acrobatic performers spend so much time up in the air, crawling along the ceiling, swinging on stars, dangling from rafters or balancing on pinpoints.
All of that is important, as is the high level of skill that goes into a Do Jump! show. More important yet is the general air of benevolence, a kind of comedy-making that relies less on punch lines than on good humor and affection. Do Jump! coaxes kids into its friendly web of enchantment (it doesn’t take much coaxing; they’re eager to chime in) and reminds adults of the happy head-spinning effects of getting lost for a little while to the everyday world. Without denying the seriousness of all that surrounds us, Do Jump! declares: You have the right to escape into wonder. You have the right to feel good. To which it might add: You have the right to remain silent, but betcha can’t keep from laughing.
“Greatest Hits for the Holidays,” which opened Friday night at Echo Theatre and continues through Jan. 2, is assembled from snippets of shows over roughly the past 20 years, but it feels fresh and lively. Longtime audiences will be familiar with a lot of the pieces, but the current company is vigorous and talented, and the weaving of bits, especially in the first act, is so surprising and creative that it all seems new – or at least, cast in a refreshing new light. Borrowing elements from old and new vaudeville, Lane unveils a free-form razzle-dazzle of a variety show that tumbles over itself yet nimbly keeps its balance as it gently throws the audience for a loop.
As you’re riding the loop-de-loop you’ll encounter a shaggy dog (two actors in a costume, chasing happily down a video-projected street) and a group of acrobatic clowns befuddled by the predicament of a guy stuck up a ladder that doesn’t reach the ground, and a fair amount of juggling and playing with things spinning on strings, and two skittering characters named Ah and Ha (you sing along with them, like following the bouncing ball on a movie screen) and even a little bit of good old-fashioned black light.
Lightness, of course, has depth, both philosophically and technically. Lane’s sense of comedy has always been rooted in community, and while it’s frequently aware of social issues and politics, it also transcends them, framing them in human terms rather than joining directly in the fray. Her art is more about how we think than what we think (although she believes the “how” can lead to the proper “what”), and she’s a walking advertisement for the fusion of creativity and practicality: She knows how to shape her ideas and how to make those tough illusions happen.
It’s no accident that this show’s credits give prominent listing to essential technical skills such as rigging design (David Saintey), projection design (T.C. Smith), water animation (Daniel Lane), video (Yalcin Erhan) and rigger (Mike Mesa) in addition to the more usual credit for lighting design (Tad Shannon, whose inventive work is spot-on).
Do Jump! wouldn’t be Do Jump! without the music that keeps it jumping, and longtime collaborators Klezmocracy – pianist Ralph Huntley, percussionist Joe Janiga, multi-instrumentalist Courtney Von Drehle – are once again an invaluable and energizing part of the action. So is composer Joan Szymco, another longtime collaborator, whose music forms the core of the lovely “Peace Window” and the insouciant “Ah Ha.”
