Review: New series at Film Forum opens with multimedia 'experiment' of dance, film, more

It may be happening at a film theater — but the minute you enter the venue where "Bridging Wounds" is playing, you know you're not at the movies.

At least, not in any usual sense.

The show, dreamed up by Paris Hurley (Degenerate Art Ensemble, Kultur Shock), opens Northwest Film Forum's new series, "Live at the Film Forum," and encompasses dance, live music, animation and voiceover. It also boasts a set by Seattle design studio iacoli & mcallister that's a character unto itself. While Hurley makes exciting use of these components and NW Film Forum's space, she also delivers a bit of a head-scratcher.

This hourlong multimedia experiment places her and dancer-choreographer Ezra Dickinson among a busy array of scrims, screens and fragile-looking "shelters" composed of wood, plastic sheeting and masking tape.

As a kind of prelude, a black-and-white animated film by Amanda Moore is projected on high above their two silhouetted figures. The playful imagery seems a cross between the charcoal animations of William Kentridge and a Western variation on Balinese shadow-puppet theater. It traces the journey of a young woman through a shapeshifting world. While it seems only loosely connected to the show that follows, it has a genuine unpredictable charm to it, as do Moore's later animation sequences.

Film gives way to live action as Dickinson and then Hurley embark on solos that explore the crowded environment around them. Dickinson is all smooth lines and silky lift as he goes through alternately slow-motion and rapid-slice paces. Hurley, with a multicolor crinoline "nest" wrapped around her hips, tackles the stage with dart-and-spin moves, punctuated by twitches, trembles and long, tense pauses.

Her isolation, like Dickinson's, seems inviolable at first. But those odd structures onstage — especially that peculiarly porous "tent" at dead center — are there for a purpose. "Bridging Wounds" really comes alive when they start to make contact.

Hurley and Paurl Walsh's atmospheric score, with its eclectic blend of minimalism and instrumental prog rock, helps tie all the pieces together. The one weak link is a sometimes ponderous voiceover, but even this rises to the occasion in the show's final moments with a wry meditation on belated perception.

Michael Upchurch: mupchurch@seattletimes.com