The Out of the Loop Fringe Festival was last weekend in Dallas at the WaterTower Theatre. I joined 5 members of Out On a Limb Dance Company for a performance on Sunday evening. I am continually amazed at how their choreography evolves. One of the pieces premiered that night, called A Long Journey Home (photographed). The movement was refreshingly physical and the choreography complicated yet palpable. I was in awe as I watched it from 4 different views through rehearsals, dress runs, and backstage perspectives and I could never get enough.

Naturally, it made me wish I was in this piece, but i doubt my one year old infant son (who's trying to crawl into my lap at this moment) would let me travel for rehearsals any more than I already do.

But more than just being a piece that makes me want to dance it, it is a piece that is delicately smart and generous with kinesthetic detail that begs to be seen more than once. The longer I watch this company, the more I see the performers evolve as well. It is work that breathes and allows the performers to actually BE performers - to bring to the work an individual telling of the story, not just an imitation of the choreography. I so appreciate that as a performer myself.

Kudos, OoLD. More than kudos...bravo.

Rachel Bruce Johnson