TRACES Broadway Playhouse
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The seven cast members—six men and one woman—are nearly all Cirque du Soleil vets, but the directors/choreographers, Shana Carroll and Gypsy Snider, have roots in San Francisco’s Pickle Family Circus. An offshoot of the San Francisco Mime Troupe, Pickle drew on some of the same community-centered, egalitarian principles as the Mimes while also making room for world-class clowning by the likes of Bill Irwin, Geoff Hoyle, and Snider’s stepfather, Larry Pisoni. 7 Fingers doesn’t have clowns, but the “digits” use sly, self-effacing physical humor to establish distinct onstage identities. That usually isn’t allowed to happen in Cirque du Soleil shows, where big fat production values trump individuality.
Nor are the performers subsumed, Blue Man-style, into a multimedia hive-mind performance rave. Wearing black, white, and gray street clothes and performing on a set suggesting a run-down rehearsal hall—with shabby chairs and a piano that’s seen better days—they come across as a group of friends hanging out backstage, challenging one another to ever-greater feats of physical daring. Extreme sports are an obvious influence throughout, and at points Traces threatens to become an artsier version of Jackass. But Carroll and Snider also introduce elements of dance. Benoît-Charbonneau and Mason Ames perform an athletic pas de deux that deftly captures the attraction/repulsion axis of romantic love. In its more aggressive moments, the show reminded me of the body-slam techniques of local choreographer Atalee Judy and her Breakbone DanceCo.
