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MONTCLAIR, N.J. — Some choreographers build up to audience participation, or infiltration, during the course of an evening, but not the South African artist Robyn Orlin. Within the first five minutes of her expansively titled “At the same time we were pointing a finger at you, we realized we were pointing three at ourselves,” her fluorescent-clad dancers clamber into the audience, swatting at the seats and the people in them with rubber flip-flops.
Those dancers are members of Compagnie Jant-Bi, an all-male troupe based in Senegal and directed by Germaine Acogny. “At the same time,” which had its American premiere over the weekend as part of the Peak Performances series at Montclair State University here, takes inspiration from a Senegalese tradition, the faux-lion ceremony, reimagined by Ms. Orlin and the performers to explore issues surrounding gender and homophobia.
Or so Ms. Orlin suggests in her program notes. In practice that exploration remains half-realized among the many moving, toppling parts of this chaotic production. In the first of many stormy moments, several towers of colorful buckets crash to the ground, freed up for various uses. Other matters take the forefront, chiefly Ms. Orlin’s status — and ours — as outsiders looking in on Senegalese culture. Known for her politically provocative work, she writes, “I felt I could not critique their culture in the same way I do mine.”
2026.01.27
MONTCLAIR, N.J. — Some choreographers build up to audience participation, or infiltration, during the course of an evening, but not the South African artist Robyn Orlin. Within the first five minutes of her expansively titled “At the same time we were pointing a finger at you, we realized we were pointing three at ourselves,” her fluorescent-clad dancers clamber into the audience, swatting at the seats and the people in them with rubber flip-flops.
Those dancers are members of Compagnie Jant-Bi, an all-male troupe based in Senegal and directed by Germaine Acogny. “At the same time,” which had its American premiere over the weekend as part of the Peak Performances series at Montclair State University here, takes inspiration from a Senegalese tradition, the faux-lion ceremony, reimagined by Ms. Orlin and the performers to explore issues surrounding gender and homophobia.
Or so Ms. Orlin suggests in her program notes. In practice that exploration remains half-realized among the many moving, toppling parts of this chaotic production. In the first of many stormy moments, several towers of colorful buckets crash to the ground, freed up for various uses. Other matters take the forefront, chiefly Ms. Orlin’s status — and ours — as outsiders looking in on Senegalese culture. Known for her politically provocative work, she writes, “I felt I could not critique their culture in the same way I do mine.”
2026.01.27
