In a recent edition of Danceletter Picks, I mentioned that I might start mixing things up in this space to include some non-picks content, like interviews with artists. I’m pleased to report that I’ve actually followed through on that idea, and doubly pleased that it’s in the form of a conversation with the performer and choreographer Symara Sarai, who’s presenting a new solo, I want it to rain inside, on July 24 at Kestrels.
I first saw Symara’s work about a year and a half ago, in a festival organized by the collective Pioneers Go East. It was an improvisational solo with such an unflinching sense of risk, such total aliveness, that I left the theater in sort of a blissed-out daze, feeling lucky to have been there. That same electrifying energy infused her recent work for the Fresh Tracks series at New York Live Arts, Batty Juice, a trio for herself, Mikaila Ware, and Kentoria Earle, exploring ideas around Black women’s autonomy. With set design by Xinan Helen Ran — sculptural, almost creaturely metronomes planted around the stage — and a foreboding yet propulsive soundscape by CHIMI, Batty Juice seemed to flirt with impending doom, courting and repelling it, as the dancers ensnared themselves in tricky situations and matter-of-factly slipped back out.