Hugging 5000 in 15 hours

Donna Uchizono is an intelligent choreographer who can create intoxicatingly beautiful dances, but whose conceptual underpinnings sometime overwhelm her deliberate, often introverted movement. “Approaching Green,” a premiere performed at New York’s Danspace Project, was packed with so many ideas and production elements that the dancing wound up playing a supporting role. Uchizono’s impetus for the work was witnessing an Indian spiritual guide hug 5000 people in 15 hours, and also the process of aging.

These are already big ideas, but she went a step further by associating youth with the color green; stating that aging is growth and therefore can also be connected with green, and then subverted it all by making every element pink, the color the eye sees after staring at green and then looking at white.
Amidst that background, what ultimately resonated were the recurring motif of hugging -- which began upon entering and being greeted by five “huggers” – and Wendy Winters’ sets and costumes, all a delectable pastel pink. Winters created a fantastical backdrop of pink cloth with bubble-like cut-outs; a large oval of opaque white mesh that became a cameo with backlit silhouettes; and ...