Performance Overview

“It’s not easy being green,” Holland Andrews belts out to a packed house. Right next to him, Katrina Reid, decked out in an astronaut helmet, is doing this slow twirl with a reflector, throwing these cool shimmering lights all over the green stage. Holland keeps going, singing about how being green every day is a bit of a bummer when you could be a flashy red, yellow, or even gold instead.

Event Context

So, there’s this show in 2023 called [siccer] at REDCAT, paired up with this art thing at ICA LA. Will Rawls, who’s both an artist and a choreographer, is totally into exploring how Blackness just doesn’t stick in places that try to wipe it away. In the show, you’ve got like five or six dancers dodging this camera that keeps snapping pictures non-stop. They’re all over a green screen, and there’s loads of cool sound stuff happening thanks to Holland.

Cultural References

Now, the tune Holland’s rocking, “It’s Not Easy Bein’ Green,” is actually an old number from 1970 sung by good ol’ Kermit on Sesame Street. But here's the kicker: Will mentions that he was inspired by a special duet of this song by Ray Charles and Kermit on The Cher Show back in '75. They kinda riff on being unseen and finding your own groove despite it all. Will even said that in that show, green wasn’t just a color – it was like having the blues.

Performance Dynamics

The vibe of the performance takes a wild turn when the performers start yelling “It’s a twister!” and spinning around to this surreal mix of cow sounds and thunder. One of them’s like, “What even is genre?” Then they get all meta talking about if genre is real or if it’s all just smoke and mirrors, like cake or something wild like genre-futurism. They go all out questioning and teasing the whole idea of fitting into neat little boxes.

Soundscapes and Themes

Meanwhile, Holland’s layering these eerie sounds - think swamp critters and echoey wails over some club beats. It gives the show a deep, intense vibe. The whole thing messes with typical stories and kind of skips around without settling. There’s this scholar, Fred Moten, who talks about this stuff, saying that Black performance just won’t be pinned down.

Exhibition Experience

Over at the ICA LA, they’ve turned the main hall into something like a swamp, and there are videos of the live show playing. Depending on where you stand, the dancers sort of glitch and blend in and out of view, which is super trippy. It’s like they’re there, but also not, always slipping away from being captured. The exhibition itself throws a spotlight on how tricky it is to keep something as alive and kicking as a live show in a museum.

Climactic Moment

The biggest moment – total scene-stealer – isn’t even in the exhibition. It’s in the live show where they literally drag Will Rawls out from behind the scenes. It feels like that moment in The Wizard of Oz when they reveal the wizard. Will is actually part of the magic, both making it and being in it, and he flips the script on what we think about race, creativity, and who’s really in charge. They use the green screen not just for effects but as a live playground for rethinking the whole game.

Conclusion

What Will’s doing with [siccer] isn’t about giving us a neat, wrapped-up story. It’s more like he’s always in the middle of figuring things out, not settling for easy answers or quick fixes. And that’s what makes it so gripping – it's a continuous vibe of challenging the norm and just never, ever being pinned down.